Salmon on the Grill

Here's what I had for dinner last week. Salmon was at a good price at the supermarket and that is one fish I just adore. Having been enjoying a day of sunshine in the midst of torrential rains, I decided it must be prepared on the grill.

I got out a giant sheet of foil (cause this was a giant slab of fish) and drizzled a bit of olive oil on it. In my memory somewhere it seems I've seen a light olive oil packaged in a spray bottle. It always seemed needlessly fussy to me. I mean, who can't manage the distribution of their olive oil, after all. But on this day I wished for one for I only wanted just the lightest of coatings to avoid a stick.

I distributed two cloves of garlic (minced) and 1/2 t. tarragon over the salmon and folded the foil around it, crimping it shut two or three times over to avoid leaking any fantastic juices.

What's so great about fish is the quick cooking, and heaven forfend that it overcook. I slammed this puppy on the grill for ten minutes and it was perfect.

Unwrap and serve with something green, from the garden and fabulous.

Just look at those flakes!

On Motherhood

Stuff I learned from my mother:

Selflessness - In the way she always convinced us she really wanted the smallest pork chop or the burnt piece of toast.

Work Ethic - I have a mental picture of my mom every Saturday evening, setting her hair in rollers for church the next day, her chin dropping to her chest as she nodded off with hairpins in her mouth, exhausted from the day's work.

Self-Sufficiency/Thrift - Mornings in the garden, before it got too hot. Evenings under the lamp of the sewing machine. Vacation days away from the government job, but hard at work canning in the summer kitchen.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. - "Kids, stop scuffling."
"Settle down."
"I asked you to stop."
"Kids!"
"OK, AS SOON AS ONE OF YOU CRIES, YOU'RE BOTH GETTING SPANKED!
(Actually, should this entry be called, "If you can't beat 'em, give them a beating?"

Individuality - In the days of my adolescent conformity, my mother was not one bit interested in my desire to not be noticed. I was constantly embarrassed by my simple family and my mother just shrugged and did as she saw fit. If it was raining, she pulled from her purse the little pouch with the rain bonnet in it, unfolded it from its accordion shape and slapped it on her head... while I walked twenty feet behind and pretended to study my shoes.

Ambition - I don't know how my mom thought she could go to college. It certainly wasn't a precedent in her community. Her own mother died when she was only two, and her older sister moved back to the farm with two young children, so Mom had babies on her hip from the age of ten. The family was rich in love, but not particularly lucky at farming. When Mom went an hour away to college, earned her degree and settled down two hours away from the farm, she seemed elegant and city-ish. (She was a school teacher and our town had 1200 people.)

Family is Precious - "If I happen to be in a coma when your baby is born, please make sure I hold him." (From the hospital bed in her living room.)

My mom offered me a lot during the 25 years I had with her. As a child, I felt like nothing was quite right if she wasn't at home and even terrible things were manageable as long as she was a part of the solution. There were times when my parents went out for the evening or mom had a meeting at church and I had to go to bed in a house where my mother wasn't. I would lie in bed and stare at the wall wondering how to sleep in such a house. The country road outside my bedroom window was not well-traveled and if the headlights of a car crossed the wall of my darkened bedroom, I would wait and hope that the headlights would slow down and turn into our driveway. Often they did not and that felt so sad.

My mom is gone now and I lost her too soon. She didn't get to hold my baby, coma or not. I remember the moment, a week into my own motherhood experience, that a wave of realization crashed over me. What I felt for my baby was WHAT MY MOTHER FELT FOR ME. And I never had a chance to let her know that I GET IT. And my grief started all over again.

But really, not all people have such great mothers. Or such moments of clarity. I'm lucky to have these reasons to be so sad sometimes.

I hope I honor motherhood as much as my mom did. As much as I learned at my mother's elbow, first-hand experience is a better teacher. The best truth I've gotten is the knowledge that I'm actually tough as nails.

OK, I've been mulling over deciphering the formula that makes a mother a warrior. I just keep landing on cliches, like the fact that we're nurses, chauffeurs, housekeepers, cooks, mediators, educators, coaches, philosophers, etc. I think it's all true, but everyone has heard it already, so it's lost the meaning of what I'm trying to say. I think part of it is that we ARE all of those things, but we do all those jobs while we're exhausted, grieving, angry, lost, sick, worried, lonely, misunderstood and unsure. And we do them not because its our job, but because we are compelled - by duty, by devotion, by dedication to our families.

Unglamorous, motherhood is. I never said it was pretty. Everyone else's needs come first and, while I sometimes get tired of it, I wouldn't have it any other way. How many Sunday mornings do I focus on getting everyone else dolled up for church, only to slam on my one and only coat of mascara in the parking lot of the church? I could be sitting, midstream, on the toilet, and if any of my children called me with urgency, I'd be running out the door with my pants around my ankles. Every one of us has been soaked in urine, diarrhea, breast milk, mud or vomit and kept on tending to another, simply because it needed to be done.

Last summer, I allowed each of my three kids to take a friend for a day at the beach. Great day, for sure, but no sooner had we pulled out of the parking lot and gotten on the interstate than we had a flat tire. A flat tire! With six kids in the van! It was hard to figure out how to change the tire, but I did it. Actually, for me, it was hard to figure out how to get the spare out of its hiding place! I got filthy dirty and aloof strangers felt they were doing their part by looking at me sympathetically as they whizzed by in their functional cars. But had they stopped and helped me out, I would have missed the triumph in doing a hard thing simply by putting my head down, being an adult and getting through it. And because I'm a mother, I did it while teaching valuable lessons: Here's how to change a tire. Here's where you put the jack. If you don't know the answer, look in the owner's manual. Oh, you tightened the nuts as far as they would go? Lemme see. (Craaank. Craaaank. Crrraaaaaannnnnnnk.) Your mother is still the toughest person you know.

I'm always confused by women who call in the coast guard whenever they are sick, busy or unrested - women who need someone with them when they take the child to their immunizations - because it might be hard. They are totally robbing themselves of the chance to find out what they can do. They can be the only one in the room, heck, in the WORLD who will make things better for another human being. Your child's head fits perfectly into that comfortable spot on your shoulder. No one else's feels as good to them. The way you do Christmas, or Sunday evenings, or road trips - is going to be the way your children think they should be done when they have children of their own. Doesn't that make you feel frikkin' powerful? It does me. I don't know if I've done justice writing about all motherhood has given me. It gave me a backbone and self-esteem and resolve and identity and it made me an adult once and for all. I'm nobody's princess. I'm a gladiator. A superhero. And I can feel great about myself because such a job will have an eternal presence in my family tree.

Apple Crumb Pie

It's Teacher Appreciation week again in our local school system. The PTO at my girls' school provides a meal for the staff on the Wednesday of this special week. For three years I've been asked to provide all the homemade pies for dessert, and for three years I've agreed to the task.

This year I hadn't heard anything about the meal until quite late. I stopped in the office a couple of weeks ago on my way to volunteer in Ava's classroom. The principal turned all smiley and charming and told me the teachers really hoped to get homemade pies again this year. I thought it was strange I hadn't heard anything from the PTO yet. After a little investigating, I learned that my buddies in the Parent/Teacher Organization had set out to protect my busy schedule (and sanity) and had taken the homemade pies "off the table."

I never thought of myself as the co-dependant type, but knowing that a group (or even just one person) wanted some of my baking so badly caused me to volunteer to donate time I didn't have if PTO would cover the expenses. And so, after getting home from the Little League field at 8:30 PM on Tuesday, I set to work.

I planned to make six pies and that's what I made last year, but I think I accidentally made seven. My pies were: apple crumb, rhubarb, strawberry, frozen coconut, peach cream, peanut butter, and banana cream. Whenever I make a large batch of pies, I like to make both peanut butter and banana cream because I can just make an extra large batch of vanilla pudding and either pour it over peanut butter crumbs or banana slices. The pies definitely got eaten, but the banana pie was the last one (by far) to be chosen. I wonder if I should make it again.

The quickest to disappear were the strawberry and rhubarb.

If I did it for the adulation, I was not disappointed. I'm a little embarrassed about how much it meant to me.

Here is my recipe for Apple Crumb Pie.

3 c. peeled and sliced apples (I like Granny Smiths for baking.)


1 c. sugar


2 T flour
1 dash of cinnamon


1 unbaked pie shell


Mix these first four ingredients together in a bowl.




Then, put in unbaked pie shell.


Make crumbs of the following:

1/2 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. flour
3 T margarine


Pour over the apples in the pie crust. Bake at 400 for 15 minutes, then turn down to 350 until done - about 30 minutes more.

Caramel French Toast

I did not have one healthfully redeeming meal on Easter Sunday. I helped to serve the breakfast meal after Sunrise Service this morning at church. We had a family Easter meal after church. And, finally, we celebrated a couple of birthdays with that same branch of the family at suppertime, complete with homemade ice cream and a cake with an entire pound of butter in the frosting. By the end of the day, I didn't even feel treated by the birthday party.

What a fun-packed weekend, though. On Saturday morning I took Ava to the egg hunt put on by the Lion's Club in the wee village in which I grew up. I'm all the more charmed by it because it is exactly as I left it when I last hunted eggs myself nearly 30 years ago.

Ava's age group lined up at the section of the playground which was designated for them. The kids were thick on the end closest to the door from the gym where they had gathered at 9:00 AM. Not being the pushy type, Ava kept moving further down the line until we reached the very end, where there were no other kids. Interestingly, that left her with the entire east side of a playground full of plastic eggs where she might hunt in relative solitude.


...For about 48 seconds...

...Or until the heavily populated west end was picked clean and the swarms descended upon her.


Sunday brought a day of church and family. When we finally got to the family part, I could sit down for a spell and rest my feet. Lawd, those church shoes were not meant for cooking breakfast. Behold, the Easter toes.


While I like to make things from scratch and experiment with recipes, my friend Tammy is expert at feeding crowds. She has done many funeral dinners and Easter breakfasts at our church. We worked together to plan this year's menu. She made biscuits and yummy gravy and an awesome baked egg I'll have to tell you about later. I made French Toast. For weeks beforehand I wondered, should I make traditional French toast (needed: lots of griddle space and time to spend flipping) or baked (needed: lots of oven space that might be in short supply)?

Twenty hours before we were to serve, I decided to do the baked. Here is the recipe:

Caramel French Toast
In a heavy saucepan, combine the following:
1 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. butter
2 T light corn syrup

Cook over medium heat until thick. Pour into a 9 x 13 pan. Cover with 12 slices of bread. French bread is better and more dignified, but the sandwich bread here was donated by the parishioners, so beggars can't be choosey.


Combine the following and pour over the bread:

6 eggs, beaten
1-1/2 c. milk
1 t. vanilla
1/4 t. salt



Cover and chill overnight. Uncover and bake at 350 until set and golden brown. Serve immediately. Serves 6 generously.

In Which She Cleans Her Pantry

I have one of these numbers in my kitchen cabinets.



Honestly, I've lived here for almost five years and the jury is still out on it. The shelves on the right are deep and I can't see or find the stuff at the back. The shelves on the left are shallow and actually serve as a door that pulls out revealing more shallow shelves. Every time I think it should be filed under Fancy But Not Useful, I'll have an organizational tangent in which I realize that it really holds a ton of crap.

It had been ages since I'd cleaned it out and I had been coming home from the grocery store feeling like I had no place to put the new stuff. (Honestly, why do I need new stuff when there is no space in my pantry?) When I emptied it completely, I could see all of the nonsense cluttering the shelves. All of my baking ingredients are here. Of course I had three containers of ground cinnamon. And taking up valuable real estate on the seasoning shelves were some cork-topped bottles which I had purchased to store spices, allowing me to buy seasoning in bulk and store them prettily. I had several bottles that had been emptied, but not refilled. They still sat, uselessly, in my pantry door. I'm washing them now so that I can relabel and refill them with fresh ingredients.

Also hogging the shelves were "quick meal" options that I forget about using. I realized that I had an extra shelf, which I installed down low and now there is a shelf for those kinds of things so that they can be displayed prominently at the front of the shelf.



I realized I had MOUNTAINS of dried beans and legumes for crock pot cooking. However, I hardly ever use my crock pot. I need to. I MUST! But it's not my habit and it's hard to change habits isn't it? Because my dried bean cup runneth over, I whipped up a batch of these the very next day:



My mother used to make something called butter beans. I don't know what the technical definition of butter beans is, nor do I know how my mom made them. I just asked my dad recently how mom used to make them and he had absolutely no idea. Several years ago I came up with a good simulation for that dish. I threw about 2 cups of dried lima beans into the crock pot, along with about a quart of flavorful chicken broth. I had the cooker on low for 6-8 hours until the beans were soft.

So rich and savory!

Now I only need to make them about 14 more times so that I can have elbow room on my rice and bean shelf.

Last weekend was very fun. On Saturday, I met a woman for lunch who was a friendly acquaintance in college. After college we proceeded to not have any contact for 15 years. Through the wonder of Social Networking, we have become Actual Friends on Facebook. We ate at a great authentic Mexican restaurant, which had a great queso for our chips and we got reacquainted. Or, heck, got to know each other in the first place. For instance, I had no idea back in college that she was an artist, but she freelances as a calligrapher and henna artist these days. She dolled me up after the juevos rancheros.

On Sunday, we had a couple of families over for games and grub. It was a wonderful time. Not only do the adults hit it off splendidly, but there are very terrific playmates for every one of the kids. The eleven-year-old girls are even a threesome, and, as everyone knows, girl threesomes are very difficult to manage. Whenever we get together, I always get the sense that no one is being taken advantage of, and no one feels like including someone else is a duty - it seems genuine.

Everyone pitched in with tasty food and one of my contributions was a salad of these ingredients:






Mandarin Cashew Lettuce Salad
1 - 1/2 heads of lettuce
1 lb. diced ham
1 - 1/2 c. red grapes
2 c. mozzarella cheese, grated
1 red onion, thinly sliced
1 c. salted cashews

Dressing
1/3 c. vegetable oil
1/3 c. olive oil
1/3 c. apple cider vinegar
1/2 c. sugar
1 t. garlic salt
1 t. poppy seeds
1 T yellow mustard


Layer and toss the first five ingredients of the salad.


Mix dressing thoroughly.

Add cashews to the salad just before dressing and serving.

Maple Syrup

I think it's finally safe to put away the snow pants. The weather can be so strange in late winter/early spring. Just a couple of weeks ago we had our last big snow. We hadn't managed to make a snowman at that point and the girls and I determined that we wouldn't close out winter without sticking a carrot in some kind of face. Sadly, we found the snow to be too fluffy and couldn't make it pack well enough to form any kind of ball. We tried mounding it up and had more success than rolling. But still we succeeded only in making it look like a mound.

Not to be deterred, we thought maybe it would still be a creature made of snow - maybe a giant snowman with just the top of his head sticking out of the ground. We needed a big hat in order to pull it off, so Ava went inside and got a sombrero from one of the Mexican restaurants in town. We set to work with our "carrot" and "coal" and this was the end result.


We named him "Pepe the Snow Head."

And last week already we were out in our shirt sleeves. Ava is finally up on two wheels. Funny story: My 11-year-old, Sophie, never learned to ride. She tried to learn a few times at a younger age and had enough bad spills that she was willing to hang up her self-respect along with her bike and never try again. One nice day this spring I saw her privately and secretly trying to teach herself. This told me two things: That she really wanted to learn, and that she didn't feel good about herself.

I vowed that she would learn, and that we wouldn't put off Ava's learning any longer either. I worked with Ava for awhile and though she gamely tried, it didn't come together for her until I told her to constantly wiggle her handlebars back and forth from right to left and that would keep her from falling over. Well, that's what did it for her and she took off down the road.


We had the family come out to see and to praise her efforts. And then Sophie burst into tears. "Now I'm the only one who can't!" she wailed.

So next I worked with her. She was reluctant, nay, resistant. She can be quite bullheaded at times and she was determined that NOT being able to ride her bike was equal to winning the argument, which was most important at the moment. I didn't care. I yelled, I threatened, I took away privileges, I told her to wiggle the handlebars back and forth and she RODE that stupid bike down the drive, yelling, crying and trailing snot in the breeze behind her. It was exhausting and soul-crushing for me, not at all a shining moment in parenting history. But did you catch it?! She RODE the bike. There was success! A tiny little giggle broke through her snot-encrusted face and a seed of pride took root in her soul. Thank the Lord above. Motherhood is not for the limp.

Weather that alternates between snow head building and bike riding is tough on the sinuses, in my opinion, but it's great for maple syrup production. I heard a discussion on the making of maple syrup on NPR recently. It was said that the sap flows best through the trees when the weather starts to warm. It's best when the days are a bit above freezing and the nights are just below. But as soon as the tree begins to bud, the sap will no longer be sweet.

I thought to myself that this cold, consistent spring was probably really great for collecting maple sap. Later in the week, I came home to find this bottle sitting on my kitchen counter.

That's my daddy's angular handwriting on that scrap of paper. I called him up and found that he had been helping a buddy with the boiling of his maple syrup during this record-breaking season of production. He got a couple of gallons of the stuff as payment.

It is nothing out of the ordinary in this area to drive through the country and see something like this on either one tree in someone's yard, or a whole orchard of trees in a heavily wooded area.


As it warms and the sap begins to move, it is collected in buckets like these, set under a hole drilled low on the trunk. Skinny trees can only have one tap, but older, fatter trees can have two or even three taps bleeding the sap into the collection buckets.

Once you have enough sap acquired, it's time to boil it down into syrup. It has to boil for a long time in order to remove the water from the sap, which thickens to the consistency we recognize, and to concentrate that wonderful flavor. It can be done at home on the stove top, but you should have a fan and a dehumidifier running. Professionals like to use outdoor ranges to avoid the build-up of moisture in their homes.


As the sap boils, the foam must be skimmed off from time to time, removing impurities from the final product. The temperature should be brought to seven degrees above boiling, and remain at that temperature throughout the process.

Once it's boiled to the consistency you like, you can filter your syrup if you choose. Or you can let it cool and let the crud sink to the bottom. You'd fill your bottles with the clean syrup at the top and avoid the impurities in that way.

As with anything homemade, I think a product always seems more wholesome and delicious when one makes it one's self. But be forewarned: It can take 25-75 gallons of raw sap to make one gallon of prepared syrup!