Eberle’s Homegrown Cherry Pie

Happy Thursday, folks!  Hope you have a good appetite this morning.

Eberle says that her recipe for a cherry pie begins as follows: “Plant a cherry tree.”  We are so lucky to have two pie cherry trees in our garden, & they are very hardy & consistent producers, too.  Springs in Indian Valley, Idaho can be unpredictable.  On the whole, they tend to come pretty early, but we can be cursed with a late freeze that will wipe out peaches & pears & even plums.  But the cherry trees always seem to hang in there & produce a bounteous crop in July & August.

Once you’ve planted your cherry tree & it’s grown & producing cherries (or you find another supply of same), Eberle suggests the following:

For the pie filling:

2-½ cups of pie cherries
2 Tbsp of tapioca
1-¼ cups of sugar

Warm the pie filling ingredients until the tapioca is dissolved.

For the pie crust:

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp sugar
¼ tsp salt
6 Tbsp (¾ stick) unsalted butter, cut in pieces & cold
1 egg yolk
2 Tbsp of ice water

After you have formed your dough, refrigerate it for 1 hour.

Then bake the crust at 425 degrees for 8 minutes before adding the pie filling.  After 8 minutes, turn the oven down to 375, add the filling & bake until the crust is golden brown.

I think you can handle it from there! 

Have a wonderful day.

Hot Cockles in the Pantry

[Here’s Eberle’s examination of pantries!]

In kitchens without plastic wrap, bags, or containers, without refrigerators and freezers, food storage took up a great deal of time. It took up space too. Instead of a single room housing all kitchen activities, several rooms were designated for food storage and preparation: larder, buttery, pantry. Each had a different purpose.

The larder originally served to store meats—salted, smoked, or partially cooked and kept in barrels of lard. In Medieval times, huge quantities of preserved meats were kept in multiple larders. As the need for storing large amounts of meat disappeared (few nineteenth century households anywhere were storing 50 – 100 deer carcasses at a time) larders changed their nature to some degree although they kept their name. Rural families still butchered in the fall when the weather was cold and the meat would keep the longest. They made use of traditional preservation methods—salting, drying, smoking, storing in brine or lard, and sausage-making—but on a smaller scale. A single farm family could not consume all the fresh meat from a large slaughtered animal before much of it went bad. However, in urban areas or places with large regional markets, animals could be slaughtered and the meat sold fresh before it spoiled. As meat became regularly available year-round to separate family residences, the larder shrank and became home to other food items such as cheese as well as meat. To keep the larder cool, householders located it on the north side of the main dwelling. Sometimes the larder, as a small room or simply a cupboard, contained a screened window open to the outside to allow for air circulation.

The word buttery originally referred to butts (or pipes—units of measurement) of ale and wine. Casks of cider, ale, and stronger spirits were kept, ideally, in a cool, dry, dark place, and by the nineteenth century, the buttery had become the wine cellar. Here the master of the house could pride himself on his knowledgeable choice of wines —and demonstrate the length of his purse to his dinner guests. The rather pig-headed archdeacon in Barchester Towers is not shy about holding forth on the subject during a visit that included a tour of the wine cellar: “This cellar is perfectly abominable. It would be murder to put a bottle of wine into it till it has been roofed, walled, and floored. How on earth old Goodenough ever got on with it, I cannot guess. But then Goodenough never had a glass of wine that any man could drink."

The cellar makes special appearances in gothic tales as well. In Edgar Allen Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado, a host murders a guest by luring him to the cellars beneath the house, promising a taste of a rare wine and pretending to want the guest’s opinion of it. Instead of presenting him with the promised sherry, the host walls his guest up alive in a niche in the cellar, stopping his work occasionally to listen to the doomed man’s screams.

Things like this just didn’t tend to happen in the pantry. The nineteenth century home provided an architectural division of the sexes, and the cellar was excluded from the female realm. The housekeeper held the keys to many doors and cupboards, but the butler kept a firm grip on the keys to the wine cellar. The pantry, the larder, the linen closet—this was the province of women, described by Susan Ferrier in Marriage: “Their walk lay amongst threads and pickles; their sphere extended from the garret to the pantry.”

The word pantry comes from the Latin word for bread, panis, and originally the pantry was the room where bread was kept. Also the ingredients for making it and for waging the battle against mice and rats that inevitably ensued. Over time the pantry took on multiple identities—it could be a cool room separate from the kitchen where some food, especially leftovers, were stored, and it became a storage area for china and glassware as well. Pantries were not merely shelves for storage, as they often are today, but self-contained rooms where a variety of activities could take place. Provisions could be unpacked there and a housekeeper could sit and have a snack in comfort. A festive treat for a housemaid in Lady Morgan’s Wild Irish Girl is “a game of hot cockles with the butler and footman in the pantry.”

The Game of Hot Cockles
A Penitent chosen by chance, or by his own choice, hides his face upon a lady’s lap, which lady serves as Confessor, and places herself in an armchair in the midst of the company. The Penitent places his hand behind him, —not on his back, which might be dangerous if the person who is to hit it should forget the proper moderation, but on his hips. Then a lady or a gentleman hits this hand and the owner of the hand has to guess who struck. If he succeed, the person he guessed is to take his place; if he is mistaken, he goes on till he has shown more penetration.
Catharine Harbeson Waterman, The Book of Parlor Games 1853

A specifically masculine version of the room evolved in the nineteenth century, distinguished from women’s territory by its name: the butler’s pantry. The butler’s pantry served mainly as a storage place for the more valuable china and silver, and also as a staging area near the dining room where the butler could decant wines, add last-minute garnishes, and heat chafing dishes. A good arrangement of these storage and preparation areas was essential to the harmony of the household in Jane Austen’s opinion. In Emma she mentions the “inroads on domestic peace to be occasioned by no housekeeper's room, or a bad butler's pantry.”

In 1869, Harriet Beecher Stowe chided men and women both for wasting so much space in extra rooms like pantries when storage and prep areas could so easily be incorporated into the kitchen itself. Harriet gives detailed plans for how this could be done in The American Woman’s Home. Her designs look very much like one of today’s kitchens, though her concept did not catch on in any general way until the next century.

In spite of Harriet’s pleas, the pantry persisted in being a room of its own—perhaps women had an incentive besides utility in preserving this often exclusively female space. Women could retreat to the pantry with the excuse of household business, and find a legitimate escape from the social or conjugal duties associated with almost all other spaces in the house. A solitary refuge, a place where women reigned, the kitchen pantry was where Emily Dickinson wrote parts of her poems. One of tasks performed daily in her household was filling the lamps with whale oil—a shelf in the pantry was devoted to this use.

As the master of the house might pride himself on his wine cellar, the mistress took pride in her arrangement and operation of the pantry. Women were charged with preserving civilized order and decorum as well as fruit, and the pantry was guarded as a feminine sanctum that stood for more than jam. Louisa May Alcott describes a grandmother who “stood in her pantry like a culinary general, swaying a big knife for a baton, as she issued orders and marshalled her forces.” The pantry generals were not always successful in protecting their territory from invasion. Pantry raids became a stock feature of nineteenth century children’s literature—and boys were almost always the culprits. One of the most famous of these raids is Tom Sawyer’s theft of jam in Aunt Polly’s pantry; outraged, she assigned him the task of whitewashing her fence as a punishment for his transgression.

Eberle Umbach
© 2007-2010

Pix from Top: [Note: I realize most of these images all come from a time before the era Eberle's writing about, but has there ever been more magnificent food painting than in the 17th century?]
The Pantry: Franz Snyders, 1620
Stilleleben: Albrecht Kauw, 1678
The Way You Hear It: Jan Steen, 1665
Still-Life with Cheese: Joris van Son, 1650s
Der verlorene Sohn (The Prodigal Son): Gerard van Honthorst, 1623
Besuch bei einem Lord: Pietro Longi, 1746
Stilleleben: Floris Claesz van Dyck, 1618

Beans with Shredded Coconut

Folks who’ve been following along here for awhile know that recipes used to be featured more regularly on Robert Frost’s Banjo—I believe the last recipe post was back in June. But hey, Eberle & I are still taking our daily bread, so I say why not get back to posting some foodie items from time to time!

Today’s recipe comes from my all-time favorite cookbook, The Africa News Cookbook; our copy is very well worn, but still intact—& that’s good because The Africa News Cookbook is out-of-print. I’m telling you folks: if you ever see it in a used bookshop, grab it! It’s great: everything from goat to plantains & lots of stuff in between. It’s also got a fair number of vegetarian dishes for those who swing that way or for those like us who aren’t “real” vegetarians but don’t eat meat very often. & of course as everyone knows, when you live that way, it’s best to become friendly with the bean.

& why not? Beans are a splendid panoply: everything from the delicacy of lentils to the “meatiness” of the kidney bean; from the delightfully sponge-like flavor absorbency of the northern to the nutty wonder of the garbanzo. In fact, it’s garbanzos we’re talking about today.

Actually, you could make this recipe with any bean, but we always use garbanzos, & why not? They are a truly delicious bean. Also, our parrot Pablo (a much bigger presence in our life than he is on this blog) has a particular yen for garbanzo beans, & they can be used to calm him down when he goes into a screaming spasm (other things that work: tortellini, eggs of any description, & ice cream; but he likes almost all food except carrots & blueberry yogurt).

The subtitle of The African News Cookbook is African Cooking for Western Kitchens, & I expect this recipe has been westernized a fair amount, & my variation on it is even more so. According to editor Tami Hultman, this is based on “recipes from Tanzania’s off-shore islands of Zanzibar & Pemba.” Here are the ingredients:

• 1 cup (or slightly more) of garbanzos (or other bean of your choice)
• 2 cups of potatoes (I generally use 4 medium potatoes)
• garlic, chopped: the book says 3 cloves, but where’s the fun in that? I use 6. Eberle & I are fiends for garlic. I leave you each to your own devices.
• ⅓ cup of oil – I use olive oil; the book calls for coconut oil, & calls for ½ cup
• 1 TBSP cumin
• 1 TBSP coriander
• juice of 1 lime (or more!)
• 2 tsp turmeric
• ½ tsp salt
• 2 chili peppers or 1 tsp cayenne
• Per the book: 1 cup of grated fresh coconut meat. OK, I’m a bit of a lazy cook, & I don’t always feel like ambling out to the workshop & getting an electric drill to perform surgery on a coconut. Tho the book expressly recommends against this, I’ve found that the shredded coconut you find in your grocer’s baking aisle works very well, & with much less fuss & muss. My opinion in this has been corroborated not only by Eberle but by at least several house guests who’ve been served this meal—as my old algebra teacher used to say, “the proof of the pudding’s in the tasting.”

I always try to soak the beans overnight to save on cooking time. Bean cooking time is a very inexact science & is determined by all sorts of variables, including age of the bean & elevation of your kitchen (that is, of your home overall above sea level). The best test for a cooked bean is the tasting. But generally you’re looking at roughly 45-60 minutes. I also boil the potatoes & put them aside. Once the beans are approaching doneness, I heat the oil, & add the garlic & the spices, then once the garlic is golden brown add the lime juice & finally the coconut. Of course you’re stirring all the while (or much of the while), but I give a vigorous stir when the coconut goes in to mix everything up; then I add the potatoes & garbanzos (as soon as they’re done), again stirring vigorously.

How long you let these flavors heat together on low heat is up to you; I’d say a at least 15-20 minutes for the flavors (including bean & potato) to become acquainted is good, & a bit longer won’t hurt. The book recommends serving with rice, but even from one who adores starches, this seems a bit of overkill to me. Were I to use rice, I’d certainly use brown rice with this dish.

It tastes great, & as you can see, it’s quite easy. I prepare it using only two pots—one for the beans, and then I double the potatoes & the final stage in the same Creuset Dutch Oven. A great, savory dish for these autumn afternoons or evenings!

Original Poetry Sunday - Pasta Alleluia – the Poem

It’s Sunday, which means it’s time for (more) original poetry. This week’s selection was written almost exactly a year ago & was one of a set of seven poems all based on a “food” theme. As is the case with many of the sequences I’ve written in my time, I intended more, but that didn’t happen. Pasta Allelulia is a real recipe, as regular readers here know. You can find the recipe in non poetic form here.

Please be sure to visit other Original Poetry Sunday participants:

Amazing Voyages of the Turtle
Apogee Poet
Poetikat’s Invisible Keepsakes
Premuin T.
Secret Poems from the Times Literary Supplement
Yes is Red

Kat’s poem at Poetikat & René Wing’s prose poem at Yes is Red are both from yesterday, but they count in my book. Also, please be sure to wish Kat a happy 2-year blog anniversary!


Pasta Alleluia


Lots of people I haven’t understood in this lifetime—
& I haven’t seen olive trees gesturing in breezes
overlooking the Mediterranean like evacuees from Bullfinch

except unmoving—the people I haven’t
understood in this lifetime but loved—& holding my hand a few
inches over the sauté pan I can tell the oil’s ready for the

garlic Eberle grew in the two rows she harvests in June—because the
people I loved I haven’t understood, I was busy thinking
about them—lightly browned, the garlic’s set aside, & chopped morels

our friends left for us added now with ground pepper—of all the
people I haven’t understood & have said I loved
—as the mushrooms wilt & soak up oil—

I haven’t walked where the forest burnt last summer, that’s
where the morels have sprouted amongst the blackened
lodgepole pine—of all the people I’ve loved

nearly the best & almost the worst & not
understood for a minute—& Eberle’s pensive in her garden
picking the spring mix—a simple balsamic dressing—of

all the people I haven’t understood & wanted to—
the chopped Kalamatas add lots of salt—about two dozen—&
the pine nuts & the oregano I never measure—

& Dani says, “I wouldn't wish writing poetry on anyone"—
tho there’s nothing else just now—keep the water at
a simmer so it’s ready for the pasta & it’s time

now—of all the people I haven’t loved well—a
guitar song I wrote for Eberle after a quarrel—the lonesome
train tracks leading everywhere past the Russian Olive groves
          including

Los Angeles—on the guitar she gave me like
love itself she gave me—of all the people I’ve loved yes I’ve loved
some of them like a guitar perhaps—salting the water—

& there’s another language amongst people who love
& a language to speak about it—talking all night like an
alleluia like a mandocello—

the people I haven’t understood—the pasta’s drained &
tossed—this is so far the hardest poem
before the next poem in this lifetime

John Hayes
© 2008-2009

Pasta Alleluia – the Recipe

A couple of folks seemed intrigued by my mention of a dish called “Pasta Alleluia” last Sunday, & so I decided to make a batch for Eberle & I, & to post the recipe here. It’s been a little while since our last foodie post, but I hope you’ve come with a good appetite!

Of course, I mentioned “Pasta Alleluia” in the context of Original Poetry Sunday, which means it also exists as a poem. I’d thought about including that with the recipe, but instead I’m going to post it for the next Original Poetry Sunday, so look for it then.

I remember the first time I heard about Pasta Alleluia. I was living in San Francisco & hanging out one day with old poebiz pal Jonah Winter. Jonah was living in a house full of the wonderful Leone family & also playing in Ed’s Redeeming Qualities with Dani Leone (Jonah being a multiple musical threat on accordion, mandolin, clarinet, pennywhistle, vocals & cardboard drum). I don’t remember the context of the conversation really clearly, tho it may well have had to do with eating well on the cheap. Needless to say, the name “Pasta Alleluia” really stuck in my mind.

It turns on that Pasta Alleluia is a Leone-ism for pasta aglio é olio, which as you may know is pasta with garlic & olive oil. As such, it’s a very basic but very tasty dish; & as Chris Leone has described in some detail to me, it can be expanded upon with ingredients ranging from humble to exotic. In the years that I’ve experimented with Pasta Alleluia, I’ve come up with the following:

Ingredients:
About 1/3 cup of good extra virgin olive oil: Sorry, but most of the measurements/quantities for this recipe are pretty impressionistic.
Several cloves of garlic, minced: I’ve used as many as 7-8 cloves of garlic, but Eberle & I love the stuff. Still, I wouldn’t cut that down too much, since the infusion of aglio in the olio is the basis of the whole recipe.
Ground black pepper to taste: Don’t skimp
A pinch or so of salt: Remember—the olives are salty!
About a cup of chopped mushrooms: Or perhaps a tad more. We’ve used the generic store-bought mushrooms, & fresh morels & the mini portabellas, & they’re all good.
Around two dozen olives, pitted & halved: Kalamatas are the best, but any old olive will do (except I avoid the canned variety).
Roughly 1/4 cup of roasted pine nuts
About a teaspoon of oregano
About a tablespoon of basil
1 lb. of spaghetti (or linguini)

That’s it—& remember: everything after the salt (except the pasta of course!) is optional, & you could substitute any number of items; sun-dried tomatoes would be wonderful, for instance.

Heat the oil on medium & then add the minced garlic (I also reduce the heat a bit when I add the garlic). Sauté the garlic for a few minutes until it’s golden, then remove the garlic from the oil using a slotted spoon. I keep the garlic aside in a small dish, because I add it back in again at the very end, but this isn’t absolutely necessary. Then, add black pepper, salt & the chopped mushrooms; sauté the mushrooms for several minutes, then add the olives & the oregano. You could also add the basil now if you’re using dried basil. If you’re using fresh basil, wait until just before serving. Again, sauté for several minutes, then add the pine nuts. Throughout this process, I use a medium low heat. After I add the pine nuts, I turn the heat down & cover.

This sort of oil-based sauce doesn’t like a long cooking time, so by now you should have your water boiling & your pasta ready to cook. Cook your spaghetti as you usually would, & when there’s a couple of minutes left for the pasta add the garlic back in (if you wish). You could also add the fresh basil. Drain the pasta, & toss it with the oil sauce.

That’s it—of course a salad is de rigueur with this. Buon appetito!

"French Toast"

With apologies to all, I have to say I don’t have a new poem for Original Poetry Sunday—the ghazals feel a bit stalled right now, but I haven’t decided what this means—so I’m posting one of the poems I wrote last spring. Especially in light of yesterday’s “autobiographia literaria,” I thought this might be interesting.

Between late June & early July (about two weeks) I wrote seven poems, all on a “food” theme; in addition to “French Toast,” there were also the following:

• Strawberry Rhubarb Pie
• Potato Salad
• Pasta Alleluia (a bit of an “in joke” here—a name for pasta aglio é olio)
• Macaroni & Cheese (this has been posted on the blog here)
• Fondue
• Greek Salad.

While I believe all seven are good poetry, I do feel at a bit of a distance from them for a variety of reasons. Nonetheless, I hope you enjoy it—& hey, French Toast is always great for your Sunday brunch…. & be sure to check out the following other blogs (at least) for Original Poetry Sunday:

Amazing Voyages of the Turtle
Apogee Poet
Poetikat's Invisible Keepsakes
Premium T.
Secret Poems from the Times Literary Supplement
Yes is Red


FRENCH TOAST


Goldfinches camped out & hectic atop the yokes of
dandelions asked the musical question I
couldn’t catch—the world grows larger some days

the fruit trees blooming white & pink & rustling with
sparrows— the world gets smaller—a kitchen beating free-range
eggs with a fork in a red glass mixing bowl &

how much cinammon & nutmeg whisked into the eggs these things are
measured in pinches like a dream I dreamed dreaming What
larks! everything’s a laugh—

meadowlarks giggling in the pasture just now
this orange & blue marmelade morning L’amour la poésie
means nothing more than the world transformed thru a lonesome

Hank Williams’ whippoorwill yodel or the paired low C’s vibrating
over a mandocello’s mahogany soundboard
a scrumptious breakfast with sunshine

pouring Grade A fancy amber through the matchstick blinds a peal of
lovely laughter a rupture in the world’s brown eggshell—
the world grows large again back at the ranch I’m

dipping wheat bread into the egg mixture the unsalted
butter skating across the cast-iron skillet the egg-soaked bread
sizzles in goldenly—& orange wedges drip on blue plates my blue

heart my red heart my golden heart opens & closes &
shrinks & grows— the world I know the people I
hold in my heart as it grows & breaks—the

world is el corazón in a Mexican painting the
brown eggshell broken & full & inscribed—the
goldfinches scattering into the blue from the blossoms &

the French Toast’s served with Grade A fancy
light amber like a window—the golden crust this morning
is everyone’s sweet eggshell heartache


John Hayes
© 2008-2009

Brewing Up Magic

(The latest installment in Eberle's Women's Art is Women's Work series is appropriate for May Day eve, as you'll see)

Then came the blue-eyed spring, flinging forth over the land the blossomy robes of her glory; and we were to have a May-pole on the green, and a pleasant picnic, the first of May. This was a time-honored custom at Ryefield.
Louise Chandler Moulton, This, That and the Other (1854)

The connection of food with sacred celebrations goes back as far as the eye can see and probably farther. Hot Cross Buns are inextricably intertwined with Good Friday, and the mince pies we associate with Christmas used to have a hollow on top, centuries ago, to hold a figure of the Christ child. Those in power recognized the potency of these food traditions during times of power struggles involving religion. Queen Elizabeth I in 1592 attempted to ban the sale of Hot Cross Buns because of their Papist overtones. The Puritan spirit of Oliver Cromwell’s ban on cooking mince pies during Christmas crossed the Atlantic in 1659 and many New England towns banned mincemeat pies at this time. Restrictions on Christmas food continued in New England for over two decades.

Some holiday rituals involving food, like the Christmas Eve wassailing of the orchards, contain connections with more ancient ritual. May Day, a popular celebration with the English since medieval times, grew out of the Celtic celebration of Beltane. Eggs and milk were prepared in various ways for Beltane, and a special oat cake was baked, with no steel implements to be used in its preparation or baking-- a tradition observed up to the end of the nineteenth century. Many May Day and Beltane rituals are associated with agriculture, since May—also known as the Month of Three Milkings—was the month when cows would be turned out to fresh pasture. Women would deck even the humble milk-pail with flowers, as Jane Barker mentions in The Lining of the Patch-Work Screen (1726). The garlands that women wove on May Day for the cows they tended had protective powers; similarly, a special cheese was made on this day and kept throughout the year, a charm of protection.

May Day

THE village bells ring merrily,
The milk maids sing so cheerily,
With flow'ry wreaths and ribbons crown'd,
Now May Day comes its annual round;
The may-pole rears its lofty head,
Round on the turf they dance and play;
Mrs. John Hunter (1742-1821), Poems (1807)

In addition to May Poles, there were May Boughs and May Bushes, decorated with garlands and colored egg shells. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, women claimed parts of the May Day celebration for themselves, perhaps because of the central role of their milkmaid predecessors. May Day was thought to be a propitious time for divination, and groups of young women would flock on that day to wells, dropping objects into them in order to see into the future. They would go hunting together for snails and bring them home—tracing, in the trails the snails made through flour sprinkled on the threshold, clues as to their own destinies. They would go wandering into wooded areas to find plants with special significance and uses—the hawthorn and the sweet woodruff. The pictures that emerge from these descriptions have one constant: that is, groups of women running off by themselves—at midnight and before dawn—away from their homes. We all know how heady that can be. You can still hear the chorus of these ghostly flocks of women of the past: “Here we come gathering knots in May, knots in May, knots in May” (knots meaning buds.)

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802-1838) describes a dream, a vision appearing on May Day eve, that draws on the connection between May Day and women. She saw:

A fairy castle, not of those
Made for storm, and made for foes,
But telling of a gentler time,
A lady's rule, a summer clime.

The Golden Violet (1827)


Divination, magical protection, visions of a peaceful future—women’s involvement in domestic arts is related to their connection with magic and witchcraft. The histories of ritual or holiday foods reveal that cooking in itself contains elements of magic—it is no coincidence that witches are described as accompanied by a cooking pot thinly disguised under the name of cauldron.

Learning to control processes like leavening with yeast, distilling, fermenting, boiling to the proper stage for making candies or jellies, and preserving—whether drying, pickling, or bottling—bears a definite semblance to the work of alchemists. Although we think of Home Ec class as distinctly separate from Chemistry class, they started out in much closer association. With this one difference, however: if you fail your chemistry lab no one gets hurt, but you’ll poison your friends and loved ones if you give them improperly preserved vegetables or meat. Mince pies, in fact, developed as a way of preserving meat without salting or pickling (the brandy in mincemeat acts as an antibacterial agent as well as a flavoring.) The crusts on early pies were thick and closely sealed and not meant to be eaten—pies were actually an early form of the press-and-seal bag.

Women as household managers used to have to produce, in addition to food and drink, many of the cleansers used in the home as well as a stock of medicines and salves. Lydia Child in her 1832 household handbook The American Frugal Housewife details home-made remedies for conditions ranging from sore throat and ear ache to dysentery and paralysis. She gives specific directions for gathering plants from the wild:

Balm-of-Gilead buds bottled up in N.E. rum, make the best cure in the world for fresh cuts and wounds. Every family should have a bottle of it. The buds should be gathered in a peculiar state; just when they are well swelled, ready to burst into leaves, and well covered with gum. They last but two or three days in this state.

Beauty treatments were a natural by-product of home pharmaceuticals, and these could be closely allied with enchantment as well. On May Day, women would rise early and go into the woods to collect dew from flowers and plants. Bathing in this dew was said to give long-lasting beauty. Of course, it could have been just another excuse for running off to the woods.

One flower gathered on May Day found its way into a May Day wine or punch—sweet woodruff. This is a low-growing hardy ground-cover that blooms early in the spring. It spreads rapidly, so try starting a patch in your own garden in a lightly shaded spot. Sweet woodruff is often planted under grape-vines because of its association with wine; also, the woodruff flowers bloom before the vines leaf out, and the summer grape leaves provide the needed shade.

Recipe for May Day Wine or Punch (from the Joy of Cooking by Rombauer and Becker):
Gather twelve sprigs of sweet woodruff and place in a bowl along with: 1 ¼ cups powdered sugar, 1 bottle Moselle or other dry white wine, 1 cup brandy. Cover the mixture and let stand for 30 minutes, no longer. Stir contents of bowl thoroughly and pour over a block of ice in a punch bowl. Add 3 bottles Moselle, 1 quart carbonated water or champagne, thinly sliced orange, sticks of pineapple, and sprigs of fresh woodruff.

(Authors’ note: If you go out frolicking into the woods with your friends after drinking this and nothing happens, you will know you have a stronger head than your dairymaid sisters of yore.)


Pictures from the top:
A Swedish maypole
Pirosmani: Woman Milking a Cow
Kate Greenaway: May Day
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
A Home Ec class, Glendale High School 1949
Lydia Child
Sweet Woodruff

Easy as Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

I love pie; & loving pie as I do it’s hard to pick a favorite variety—how can someone say, for instance, that a good pumpkin pie is more or less perfect than a good blackberry pie? As the saying goes, it’s all good. However, if I had to pick one favorite pie in some hypothetical Judgment of Paris type contest, I might have to settle on strawberry rhubarb.

I also have to point out from the get go that Eberle is a grand pie-maker. It’s true that pies used to make her nervous—so she said—tho she always made great pies. Eberle claims that the epiphany for her as a pie-maker was Dani Leone’s two pieces of advice, imparted to her back in the previous millennium: don’t handle the dough too much, & don’t worry about what it looks like. Sage advice this, & Dani is one who knows, as she’s also a very capable baker—I still recall the blackberry pie she baked for a poker game birthday party on my 40th back in Baghdad by the Bay.

So when Eberle announced yesterday that she wanted to make a strawberry rhubarb pie, I was quite happy; & she even agreed to have the process documented for Robert Frost’s Banjo.

Of course, one secret weapon in the recipe is the fresh rhubarb (see pic at top of post). Eberle’s rhubarb plant is, she says, the most worry-free of all her many horticultural friends—it’s hardy in the cold, & not even the voracious deer, who always visit in July & August, touch it—the leaves of rhubarb are poisonous, actually, & as I’m sure you all know it’s the stalks that are used in the pie.

The crust:

1 cup of unbleached all-purpose flour
1 TBSP sugar
¼ tsp salt
6 TBSP unsalted butter, cold & cut in pieces
1 egg yolk
2 TBSP of ice water

Combine the flour, sugar & salt in a bowl. Then cut the butter into bits & add these butter bits to the flour mix. Work the butter into the mix using a pastry cutter, two knives or your fingers until the mix has the consistency of coarse crumbs. Then add the egg yolk & ice water, & work the dough with your hands until it forms a ball. Cover the ball with plastic wrap & refrigerate it for one hour.

When you roll the dough out, make sure not to work it too much; working the dough too much will make the crust less tender. & of course all you bakers know this, but make sure there are no cracks or holes in the crust when it’s in the pie pan.

The filling:

approx. 2 cups each of strawberries (large strawberries should be cut in half) & rhubarb. The rhubarb is cut in 1-inch slices.
3 TBSP of minute tapioca
1-¼ cup sugar

Warm this mixture in a pot on low heat until the tapioca dissolves. Preheat the oven to 375 F. Once the tapioca is dissolved, just fill up the pastry shell & place your pie in the oven. It should bake at 375 for 10 minutes, then at 350 for about 40 minutes. The pie is done when the crust is golden & the filling is bubbling.

Poetry on a plate. & be sure to check out the slideshow presentation of this recipe, with background music by Eberle & I. The song is “Gray Dog’s Holiday,” which we composed a few years back, & has had a few musical incarnations. I always play baritone uke on the song, but Eberle has played flute, concert bells (glockenspiel) & in this case, marimba. Enjoy!

Literary Cat Fights

[Here’s this week’s installment in Eberle’s Women’s Art is Women’s Work series. It’s a rollicking take on novelist George Eliot—& there’s a marmalade recipe to top it off! Who could ask for anything more? If you’ve missed any installments, there are links to all of them under the photo titled * Eberle’s Corner * in the left hand frame.]

To say that a sisterhood of women writers and readers existed is not to imply a consistently harmonious community. Sisters do not invariably get along. As with their male counterparts, the fur could, on occasion, fly. Jane Austen’s references in Northanger Abbey to Mrs. Radclyffe, the popular writer of gothic tales, have a distinct bite to them. And Maria Edgeworth, whom Jane admired, was critical of Jane’s novel Emma, complaining that there was no story in it. Madame de Staël gave her opinion of Jane’s work in one word: “vulgaire.” Charlotte Brontë found in Jane’s Pride and Prejudice “a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. ... These observations will probably irritate you, but I shall run the risk.” No shrinking violets, our literary ancestresses, or blind followers of fashion; they read and they wrote and they formed definite opinions of their own.

George Eliot (1819-1880) has been noted for her somewhat unsisterly ideas about her sister writers. There is certainly nothing petty about a statement she made in an 1854 essay, which sweeps English women authors out of history altogether. Only French women authors, she said, “have had a vital influence on the development of literature. For in France alone the mind of woman has passed, like an electric current, through the language, making crisp and definite what is elsewhere heavy and blurred; in France alone, if the writings of women were swept away, a serious gap would be made in the national history."

The French author George Sand (1804-1876) had George Eliot’s complete respect and Sand also found admirers in Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Elizabeth’s admiration was ambivalent, containing some serious doubts about George’s adopted masculinity—not only her trousers and cigars but also her approach to writing. Elizabeth’s poem To George Sand: A Recognition ends with a hope that at some point vexed questions of gender will cease to matter: “Beat purer, heart, higher, / Till God unsex thee on the heavenly shore/ Where unincarnate spirits purely aspire!”

Elizabeth was not alone in her reservations about George Sand. A newspaper debate raged about George’s controversial work and life, and women were warned against the moral contagion that would come from reading her works, which in themselves constituted “a second fall of Eve from tasting a new fruit of knowledge.” One journalistic admirer used male pronouns when writing about her, and “What a brave man she was,” Ivan Turgenev once said of her. George herself, however, saw her works and her life in relation to other women: “The world will know and understand me someday,” she wrote to her critics. “But if that day does not arrive, it does not greatly matter. I shall have opened the way for other women.”

George Eliot’s praise of her is unstinting: "I cannot read six pages of hers without feeling that it is given to her to delineate human passion and its results... with such truthfulness and such nicety of descrimination such tragic power and withall such loving gentle humor that one might live a century with nothing but one's own dull faculties and not know so much as those six pages will suggest."

In the Prelude to Middlemarch (1871) George Eliot expressed the idea that the general run of women exhibits a certain sameness, like the sameness of their coiffures and love stories, that they are as a rule “oary-footed ducks,” and only an occasional swan is produced among them. But it may well be that all women writers are to a certain extent swans among ducks, creating themselves out of so many fragmented images of what femininity ought to be that each one is in fact her own separate species. George Eliot herself struggled life-long with these issues of identity and recreated her self several times at different points in her life.

The woman now known as George Eliot actually used five different names in her lifetime—evocative of the difficulty that women still often experience in reconciling their professional, creative, and sexual identities with social norms. Although she flouted authority in many ways, she had great respect for it in others; she kept house for her father for thirteen years, in spite of family friction, after her mother’s death until his own in 1849. George was born Mary Ann Evans, and took on the name Marian Evans when she first decided to move to London and become a writer. Marian wrote non-fiction, and edited the left-wing journal The Westminster Review. Her professional role as editor-in-chief was unusual for a woman of her time, although women writers were numerous; she also ignored rules of propriety for unmarried women in mixing with male society.

She changed her name to Marian Evans Lewes when she took George Lewes as a partner, though they did not marry. It was not at all unheard of for men and women of her time to have relations out of wedlock, but Marian’s openness about her status was unusual; in her own actions, she consistently challenged ideas about what was acceptable behavior for women. Deciding to write novels prompted her to change her name again—this time to George Eliot. She kept this name until she was sixty and became legally married, as Mary Anne Cross, to John Cross.

George’s socioeconomic identity was also complex. Unlike many of the well-known women authors of the nineteenth century, George had a father who labored with his hands. A carpenter by trade, he rose to the position of estate manager for a wealthy family in Warwickshire. George was granted access to the family’s library on the estate. Visits to the library not only enhanced the education provided to her by her own family, but gave her the opportunity of witnessing the lives of the workers as well as the wealthy on the estate lands. Her position gave her a uniquely broad perspective on the spectrum of social class—a perspective that would continue throughout her writing career as she described and interpreted the social turmoil of her times.

All women writers of the era, however, in spite of different opinions, backgrounds, and what we would now call lifestyles, had one thing in common: their association with the domestic sphere. Women, even if not performing household tasks themselves, had a supervising role in making sure that all household tasks were performed in a timely, seemly, and thorough manner. Carpets must be beaten, but not while guests are visiting; a supply of coals must be constantly on hand, stoves and chimneys kept in order, floors treated with beeswax, gardens bloom punctually with the expected colors and arrangements of borders.

George Eliot is more famous for her way with a pen than with a whisk, but in fact one of her culinary creations had a short reign as the most popular cake in England. George created the Marmalade Brompton Cake after returning to her home in 1836 to keep house for the family after the death of her mother. The Marmalade Brompton Cake achieved its whirlwind success while in commercial production by a local baker.

What could seem more English than a pot of marmalade? In the sixteenth century marmalade was made from quinces, but the term has come to refer to any sweet jelly in which pieces of fruit and rind are suspended. The secret of marmalade lies in the rind, which creates a slight bitterness to harmonize with the sweetness of the jelly. Many marmalades have a citrus base: orange (preferably Seville orange), lime, lemon, grapefruit, or kumquat.


Orange Marmalade Recipe

Cut 3 large oranges and 2 large lemons into quarters and remove the seeds. Soak the fruit for 24 hours in 11 cups water. Drain the fruit, reserving the water. Cut the fruit into small shreds, return it to the water and boil for one hour. Add 8 cups of sugar. Boil the mixture until it is thick enough to fall from a spoon in a single sheet rather than in drops (220-222º). Skim if necessary and let the marmalade cool until a skin begins to form before pouring into warm, dry jars. Letting the marmalade cool first will help keep the peel from rising in the jar. Store in the refrigerator.

Marmalade can be used as filling between layers of a simple butter cake, added to the ingredients of a bundt cake, or heated with orange juice and poured over cake as a sauce.

Pix from the top:
George Eliot at age 30 by François D'Albert Durade
Elizabeth Barrett Browning - an 1871 engraving of an 1859 photograph
George Sand by Auguste Charpentier, 1835
Title page to Middlemarch
George Eliot portrait from 1865 by Sir Frederick William Burton (Eliot age 46)
Oranges!

Frugal Chicken

It looks like March is the month for bringing back a few of the series that had fallen into a bit of neglect here on Robert Frost’s Banjo. Last week we had an installment in the Life of Objects series; this week, we’re posting recipes again for the first time in a while.

& as an added bonus, you get two recipes for the price of one! & you get a slideshow set to music by yours truly to take you thru the recipes step-by-step—it’s kind of like Food Network (& kind of not), right here in blogland.

Both Eberle & I like to cook, & we both do pretty well at it. We’re not, I think, capital “F” foodies—it really would be hard to be such & live in Indian Valley, ID, because the local stores simply don’t carry the Foodie necessities. Still, under those circumstances, we eat a diet that’s both tasty & healthy.

As those of you who’ve been following the blog for a while know, I have strong latent vegetarian tendencies, tho I’ve never really taken the vegetarian plunge. One thing that would make vegetarianism difficult is that Eberle is the best cook at preparing fowl I’ve ever known. Whether it’s chicken or turkey or Rock Cornish game hens (we didn’t eat our guinea hens when we raised them—they were strictly for grasshopper control), Eberle always prepares the bird in a really delicious way—juicy & savory. It makes me hungry just thinking about it.

So, as Eberle said the other day, “it all started with spider mites.” Yes, spider mites got into the cilantro in Eberle’s winter garden, & she was forced not only to discard all the cilantro but also harvest the basil, which had been unaffected but was in the same container. Given that we had a lot of fresh basil that needed to be used quickly, Eberle decided to make her delicious Thai country style curry—Eberle was first inspired to make this dish after a visit to the delightful (if uninspiringly named) Cannon Beach Thai Cuisine last fall.

But in addition to her many other talents & wonderful attributes, Eberle is also very frugal—a good complement to me, as I’ve never really grasped the concept of money in any realistic manner. & that’s why you’re getting two recipes in one.

We start with a free-range organic chicken, 3.3 lbs. Unfortunately, we can’t buy this at any of the local stores, but as many of you know, I do travel to the “big city” of McCall weekly, & they do stock such items in grocery stores there. For starters, Eberle made a delicious roast chicken, using some techniques she originally learned from a teenager who was obsessed with fine cooking (our friend Michael Richardson), but which she has refined over the years (incorporating some suggestions from the chicken farmer herself, Dani Leone). The ingredients:

1 whole chicken
1 TBSP butter
1 apple
½ onion
(these items are for stuffing the chicken. You can use other items—definitely including garlic—if you’d like)
A stalk of celery (placed around the chicken (also could use for stuffing)
A few sprigs of rosemary & oregano (& thyme if you have it—we didn’t)
2 TBSP (approximately) of orange juice (not from concentrate of course—fresh squeezed is even better!—you also can use cranberry juice as well as a little lime)
1 TBSP (approximately) of rice vinegar
1 tsp (ditto) of balsamic vinegar (or homemade vinegar if you’re lucky enough to have it, as we are thanks to Eberle)
A dash of Worcestershire Sauce
1 TBSP (ditto earlier) of a dark berry jam (e.g., boysenberry or blackberry—we had homemade marionberry)

Rinse the chicken & pat it dry, & pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Place the chicken breast down in a roasting pan with the butter underneath. Salt & pepper both sides of the chicken. Stuff the chicken with your fruit & vegetables, & place other vegetables around the chicken, along with the herbs. Pour on the orange juice, rice vinegar, balsamic vinegar & Worcestershire Sauce, & add dabs of jam around the bird. Then roast the chicken as follows: at 350 degrees F for 20 minutes per pound, plus about 15 minutes to account for the stuffing. In this case, Eberle put the chicken in at 4:15 p.m., & then turned it breast up at 5:10 (after 55 minutes). It’s important to turn the chicken & give it about 40-45 minutes breast up so it’s nice & brown. When the chicken is done, let it rest breast down (that’s right, flip it again) on a plate.

Of course, you need some vegetables with the chicken, & since the oven’s going anyway, why not roast them? In this case, Eberle prepared 3 carrots, a couple stalks of celery, the ½ of the onion, potatoes (all chopped), & a full clove of elephant garlic (you can use regular garlic, & certainly could use other root crop type vegetables if you prefer). Salt & pepper the vegetables after placing them on a large pan, & drizzle them with olive oil until they’re coated. Roast these along with the chicken for about an hour to 75 minutes.

Then, as my old algebra teacher used to say, “the proof of the pudding is in the tasting.” Of course, the vegetables & fruit that were used to stuff & garnish the chicken aren’t for eating, but they should be kept to use in making the broth.


When you’ve recovered from that meal, cut slices from the chicken to be used in the soup later, then cover the chicken carcass & drippings (along with the stuffing, etc.) with water in a large stock pot & simmer for four hours. Remove the chicken carcass, etc., & refrigerate the broth overnight to allow the fat to solidify & be removed from the broth. You can remove this next day with a fork, & now you’re on your way to curry!

Start heating the stock slowly, while preparing a pot of rice. Sauté 1 onion & 1 pepper (the latter optional, but why not?) with chili garlic paste (about 1 TBSP) & Thai red curry paste (about 2 TBSP) & a pinch of sugar. Add the onions & pepper to the stock, & steam vegetables of your choice (in this case, broccoli & carrots)—don’t overdo them! Place the warm rice, vegetables, fresh basil (that’s where the basil comes in) & chicken slices in bowls & pour the broth over them. & now you can eat that delicious & warming curry.

The music behind the slideshow is a piece I composed for Moominpappa at Sea. It’s a bit of a whimsy in a way—I took a well-known classical guitar idea & played around with it on a baritone uke. In the theatrical production this was used as “theme” for the Moomintroll family. Eberle & I also recorded a version of the song with baritone uke & marimba, but that wasn’t long enough for the slideshow. Enjoy!

“Babette’s Feast”

I’m writing today about a film I love—sometimes not the easiest task, to transform that experience into black & white; & the film isn’t one of the screwball comedies Eberle & I enjoy so much. It’s a much more recent film, tho it was released over 20 years ago. As the post title says, it’s Babette’s Feast.

We were all much younger in 1987 when Babette’s Feast was released. I recall seeing the film at Vinegar Hill Theater in Charlottesville, VA in the late 80s, & I recall being moved, not just by Isak Dinessen’s tale of redemption, but by the film’s amazing lyricism, its invitation into a sort of adult fairy tale.

For those who haven’t yet experienced Babette’s Feast, the story involves two sisters, great beauties in their youth, who’ve followed the teachings of their strict Lutheran father, a pastor who has created his own sect of followers along the coast of Jutland. Although the sisters are courted in their youth & have two admirers in particular, they remain unmarried & continue to do good works & maintain their father’s teachings among an aging group of followers. A French woman, fleeing from the revolutionary bloodshed in late 19th century Paris comes to them, recommended by one of their old suitors, & becomes their cook. When this woman—Babette of the title, played with wonderful bearing & deep feeling by Stéphane Audran—wins the French lottery, she persuades the sisters to let her cook a real French gourmet dinner in honor of their father. Tho the sisters agree to this, they grow increasingly distressed at the sumptuous ingredients Babette is using, & even fear that the dinner may become “a witches sabbath.” One of the sisters gathers the small congregation together to express her fears, & they all agree not to find any pleasure in the food & drink.

Of course what happens is far different than that, because the story is about redemption, reconciliation, overcoming regret at the deepest level. As I’ve grown older, this aspect of the film speaks to me more & more; as I wander here on the north side of age 50, I can sometimes wander into the “land of regret” (a phrase used by Kimy of the delightful blog Mouse Medicine in a comment here once, & a phrase I think about quite often). Although I generally see myself as a man who is happy in his life & who believes that he’s been fortunate to come to this point, there’s always that stretch of past time filled with decisions—as the Catholics say, “what I have done & what I have failed to do”—that can arise almost insensibly in the heart; because as much as our physical existence is linear, moving from point to point, our experience as thinking & feeling creatures is repetitive & circular—a fact underscored by Babette’s Feast, which resonates with echoed scenes. One of the most noteworthy of these is General Lorens Löwenhielm’s moving speech about mercy & truth. General Löwenhielm courted one of the sisters, Martine, when he as a dashing young cavalry officer. Now having come to a position of worldly power, but also evincing a deep world-weariness as he returns to the home of his love after many years, we see the feast transform him. His speech runs as follows:

Mercy and truth have met together. Righteousness and bliss shall kiss one another. Man, in his weakness and shortsightedness believes he must make choices in this life. He trembles at the risks he takes. We do know fear. But no. Our choice is of no importance. There comes a time when our eyes are opened and we come to realize that mercy is infinite. We need only await it with confidence and receive it with gratitude. Mercy imposes no conditions. And lo! Everything we have chosen has been granted to us. And everything we rejected has also been granted. Yes, we even get back what we rejected. For mercy and truth have met together, and righteousness and bliss shall kiss one another.

This is such a moving moment; it actually echoes a scene from earlier in the story when young Löwenhielm was courting Martine, & Martine’s father made a short speech containing some of the same phrases. But while the world of that earlier time seemed full of impossibilities (as Löwenhielm tells Martine at the time), now it seems that “all things are possible” (as the older Löwenhielm tells Martine after the feast). The concept that we have been granted both what we’ve chosen & what we’ve rejected is profound, & while this obviously can be seen as pointing towards an after-life, I believe it also points toward life in the here & now—this seems clear from Löwenhielm’s statement: “in this beautiful world of ours, all things are possible.” The film has a profound spirituality which stands apart from any specific belief system—both Eberle & I (a Catholic & a non-Christian) find the film equally affirming.

Part of this affirmation is the act of creation itself. Interestingly, both cooking & singing are ephemeral arts, & this underscores the doubling between Babette & the other sister, Fillipa. Fillipa is a gifted singer, & as a young woman she was courted by a famous French baritone who’d traveled to Jutland for a retreat into solitude. This man, Achille Papin, was very drawn to Fillipa both because of her beauty & also because of her amazing voice, & he offers to give her singing lessons. These lessons continue until the two sing the seduction duet from Don Giovanni—following this, Fillipa decides she can’t continue, & Papin leaves, heartbroken.

But it’s Papin who sends Babette to the sisters, & Babette, like Fillipa, is a woman whose artistry has been suppressed by circumstance—even, one might say, by fate. Without giving too much away, the film’s final moments—an interchange between Babette & Fillipa—echoes a scene between Fillipa & Papin, & underlines the redemptive power of art.

There are many lovely moments in this film, which is quiet both in terms of its deceptively simple story & also literally—there isn’t a lot of dialogue, so when characters speak, their words gather that much more weight. Henning Kristiansen’s cinematography is beautiful, & the film moves at a crisp pace under Gabriel Axel’s direction. Babette’s Feast won the 1988 Oscar in the Foreign Film category, & also won the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award for a non-English language film.

Those who are interested in the gourmet menu can find more information here & here.

If you haven’t seen Babette’s Feast, I’d strongly recommend it; if you have, I can say this is a film that rewards repeated viewings. It's art that works its way into the heart.


& finally, many thanks to our dear friend Margot who gave us the DVD as a gift to replace our dearly departed VHS copy!