A wartime table

Rosa Morgan

During World War II while my dad was stationed in the Aleutians, my mother lived on a houseboat in Lake Union with her friends Carmen Fett and Jean Elliott. This is a description, by one of the guests, of a dinner she served to some friends from his post who came through Seattle in the summer of 1944.

The supper table was beginning to assume an inviting pattern now -- twin candle sticks at either end, individual matted table coverings set out and centered with simple pale blue plates beautifully designed in their right (Wright?) proportions. Next came slim wine glasses and gleaming silverware set off by rough textured napkins. As if the sight of all this, and the intoxicating aroma wafting from the kitchen of spaghetti and meat sauce coming to a turn wasn't enough to inflame the senses and set the taste buds aquiver, Carmen had to bring in a bottle of Mexican tequila and insist we try one of her "Tequila Cocktails" before dinner. They were very dry and very delicious, kind of like Sauterne wine.

And then we sat down to a dinner for which I should have lived so long. There was spaghetti and meat sauce topped with Parmesan cheese, hot buttered corn on the cob--the first we had tasted in a long time. Then there was a magnificent salad bowl --the character of the ingredients preserved intact instead of all chopped up and minced and mixed together in the usual hodge podge most women like to pass off as a salad. There was French bread, sliced on the diagonal, rubbed with garlic and toasted -- and a bottle of red wine. At this point I was almost moved to remark that the only thing missing would be brandy with the coffee and dessert. Luckily, I contained myself, for Rosa marched in with a tray containing coffee and a decanter of Portuguese brandy, followed by cherry pie served on those Mexican dancer dishes.

Well-fed soldiers

And as the candles burned low, over a third brandy and a fourth, we remained around the table in pleasant conversation not disturbing the wonderful still life of debris between us. With a little coaxing Rosa brought out some of her photographs -- a carefully censored cross section, I'm afraid, for there appeared to be more of Otto's pictures than her own.

The evening moved on in this fashion and rounded out to its inevitable conclusion. Whether it was politeness on the part of the hostess--certainly reluctance on ours--nobody seemed willing to suggest it was time to take leave. Jean finally came bubbling in about 2 am or 3 from her party and that seemed the logical point to break off. ... You can't thank a person for an evening such as that. It can't be bought nor can it be paid for.

Two Years Later

The photo at left was taken this morning; the
one below two years, three blueberry bushes, a peach tree, and many daylillies, lavanders, and cerinthes later. I'm finally learning what will grow in this challenging spot.

Potato Tub is Thriving

Hmm... this program has decided that all photos should be centered, no matter what format I choose. Anyway, the potatoes in tubs experiment is going well so far. My little fingerlings are growing fast and lush, and I am indulging premature dreams of two harvest this year.

The test will come when the weather gets hot and stays hot, should that happen.

Anticipation

The apple trees are in bud, the newest blueberry is that amazing vibrant green (is there any color more alive than this?), and the artichoke is gearing up for year three, bound to be its best.

I love April.

Tender kale is not an oxymoron in April

I'm a big kale fan in all seasons, but I like it best right now, when soft new growth is shooting up and out, gearing up to flower. It's tender, it's sweet, and it's now or never for those particular plants.

For lunch just now I cooked up some rigatoni and added about a big bunch of kale picked two minutes before. I sliced the kale into ribbons and dumped it right in with the boiling pasta. They cooked together for maybe three minutes. Then I drained the mixture, added a tablespoon of onion compote that my friend Carolyn Dale gave me, shaved in a little Romano, and that's was that.

Other good garden news is that the peas and spinach are up, and that the hardy cyclamen I ordered from Hansen's Nursery in Oregon is now planted. Weather, work and back trouble have kept me out of the garden for a couple of weeks, and I am so glad to have puttered around a bit today.

Nettle season

I had such a good dinner with friends tonight, including a big bowl of steamed nettles. It's been a long time since I had them, and what I learned is that balsamic vinegar is the way to go. The bit of sweetness in the vinegar combines with the strong green of the nettles for side dish perfection.

What a wonderful way to bring in the spring.

Gardening with the grandbaby

Hailey has laid out lunch for "the guys," who are invisible to me: kale, walnuts, apple slices, and grape hyacinths. She ended up eating the apple and playing spitting games with most of the kale. She seems to be entering the "no greens" stage. She loves to pick them but not to eat them. We'll see how she feels when the sugarsnaps are ready.


I had some time with Hailey, so I was happy to abandon desk work in favor of a bit of gardening. We planted a small flat of chard starts (on sale, and I only have a few wintered-over plants), seeded some salad greens in a big pot on the deck, and put a few fingerling potatoes in the white pot to Hailey's left in the picture, with a mixture of compost, potting soil, and peat moss.

I've been reading up on various potato schemes. Lots of hype from sites with something to sell; lots of tales of failure from gardeners who have tried growing them in buckets, barrels, tires, etc. However, most of the sad stories I've read so far focus on too much sun in southern climes, which baked or at least shriveled the spuds before they could reproduce much. That's not likely to be a problem for me and I am very short of suitable garden spots for potatoes. Of course I live in a great potato growing region, and I can choose from a wonderland of organic varieties at the food co-op and the farmers market. I don't need to grow my own. But I do love harvesting them, so it's worth a try. Right next to the potato pot is the Meyer lemon, which has survived a couple of light freezes since I put it back outside and looks about to wake up and start growing new leaves. March is a great month.

I also stopped by Twisted S ranch in Ferndale today and bought some buffalo meat: brisket and osso bucco. I figure to give the brisket the old-school Julia Child daube treatment. It's rare that I buy an expensive cut of meat, so I may as well put some time into the preparation. That means it probably won't happen this week, but I hope it's soon.

Vegetable love

My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow....

Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress,"

That's one of my favorite lines of poetry. How peaceful it sounds to let love grow as slowly and quietly as an excellent tomato, or maybe a scorzonera root: invisible underground, and initially unpromising, but yielding great pleasure to the discerning. But of course vegetable love has its own forms of competition and violence, as every weeder knows. And humans are a hasty bunch.

Anyway, here's another poem I like, about love and produce gone wrong.

She bought the eggplant because her lover
had said he was leaving, and she'd read
somewhere it was an aphrodisiac,
and she was willing to try anything,
even magic, even vegetables.

She could have bought the eggplant at the grocery store,
but because this was work that mattered,
she drove out into the country
and stopped at a roadside farm stand.
She chose the eggplant with care, the way
she might have picked out a baby or a puppy.
She found the perfect one, long, globular,
and so purple it was almost black.

On the way home, she planned how she might prepare it —
in a cold ratatouille, cubed and sauteed,
split and charcoaled over the grill,
or sliced and marinated in lime juice —
and if it worked, and she knew it would, she'd buy more.

But already it was too late. He was gone.

She remembered how it had been back
at the beginning, when he used to come home
with an armload of greens for salads,
how they would rip, shred, grate, then toss,
and feed each other, and how she had loved him.

She kept the eggplant in the refrigerator,
because although he'd said she'd grown strange,
she hoped he'd miss her and return.

It began to soften, then turned to mush.
It liquefied and leaked all over the shelves.
It grew mold and began to stink.
Each night when he did not come back,
she looked at the sodden mess, noted the changes,
told herself it was just beginning to work.

Diane Lockward
Beloit Poetry Journal, Vol. 47, #2, Winter 1996-1997

Freshening up

February 7--Chard, strawberries and Dutch Iris; Kale revving up with new growth


Cookbook research means that I've been focusing on one vegetable at a time--eight different ways to cook rutabagas; four takes on roasted parsnips; winter squash with polenta, in risotto, in soup, in muffins.

I always learn more about the properties and affinities of vegetables I've been enjoying for years. I'm also, I admit, getting a bit tired of the root and squash vine. I know I should have another go at Kashmiri potato/turnip curry; it could be terrific instead of pretty good, but I'm not going to today.

So instead of checking ingredients, I went out to photograph my plants. It looks as though kale is on the menu tonight, and that fresh growth is a cheery sight.

Back to the Blog

I stopped adding to this blog as other responsibilities piled during my mom's final illness and her death last June.

Now as I look out at the freakishly warm rain splattering down on the leeks and kale and chard that survived the last freeze, I'm eager to get back to it. And I have news. New Society Publishers on Gabriola Island in B.C. has agreed to publish a 20th anniversary edition of my Winter Harvest Cookbook this fall. This has sent me back to the kitchen for a frenzy of recipe trials. Last week included oyster parsnip stew (delicious!) and rutabaga/raisin salad (not so great). Yesterday it was a wonderfully versatile root vegetable cobbler and a revised version of an old favorite--a quick bread loaded with grated celeriac and minced leeks.

Some of the recipes from the first book have not stood the test of time and will be replaced by new favorites, but mom's divine mushroom soup is definitely going in. She was a wonderful cook, and an amazingly hearty eater for such a thin little person in her last years, and I wish we could try out the new recipes together.