Ending On A High Note

I searched online, found several helpful sites but still had to extrapolate time & temp without knowing exactly what cut I was dealing with, the age or condition of the animal or how it was handled in the field.

In the end it came down to luck and I was lucky indeed to have been given such a gorgeous piece of venison by The Mister's friend, Dallas.

My first venison roast and it was splendid.

It looked good when I opened the package and dried it off. It smelled wonderful as I browned it with a light rub of crushed juniper and fresh rosemary, salt and pepper, and then while it roasted in the oven. But it was when I took the first pass with the knife that I knew it was a beauty; it absolutely cut like butter.

It was tender beyond description, mild and slightly sweet, a perfect Christmas roast served with garlic smashed potatoes and pan roasted Brussels sprouts. Not such a low-keyed Christmas after all...

A Low-Keyed Xmas

I looked at the mantle this morning and realized it represents the sum total interest we have in Christmas. Every year the holiday seems more hollow and only the presence of our nephew the past few years made it worth recognizing at all but this year he's spending Christmas with his new ladyfriend and her family.

While I don't miss much about Christmas I still wanted to bring out my mother's paper mache deer. A few greens, a bayberry candle and that's it. Oh and a figgy pudding...

Back In Business

Back in business and glad of it. Unfortunately the repairman, anticipating that he would be replacing the hinges, made matters worse with the door but I can make do. 

The latch on the microwave door has also broken so the stars align and this spring we will be putting in a new cabinet with new ovens. I just hope this will be the last time I will ever have to do this.

For the moment though the oven works. On Friday I set it to self-clean while I cleaned the racks and the screen and the bread dough rose. It seems the new element will require some adjustments in my baking but now there's homemade bread in the house again.

A Little Light

I took Buster #3 down to Cindy yesterday. If I had thought to take a camera I might have gotten a good picture after Cindy transfered it to a larger cage. It put on quite a display, bouncing around, looking for a way out, giving my friend, Genie, her first look at a flying squirrel.

I'm not sure what The Mister will want to do now but I don't really want to move anymore flyers in the hope that there are still some around to take up residence in a box next year.

Meanwhile after a long night of gale force winds the temperature has dropped. This morning while it feels more like winter it doesn't feel like the solstice is only a week away.  

The only irrefutable sign of the season is the length of day. 

I've never minded the shorter days this time of year, at least not at the beginning of winter. I welcome the excuse to burn candles in the evening including some true bayberry tapers made by my neighbor, Tom Helsher and always, always, burned to the socket.

Buster #2

We've had more nighttime noise in the attic recently so I reset two traps. I didn't expect any success after finding the traps closed with no quarry on several previous tries and I certainly didn't expect another flyer but that's what we caught last night shortly after midnight.

In the spring when we repair the vents I'd like to put up a flying squirrel house. I found plans for one along with a lot of other information at FlyingSquirrels.com. Thank you Steve Patterson!

Museum Glass®

I have renewed appreciation for another framed piece that belonged to my parents, a watercolor of the Lake Erie shore (possibly near Rocky River) by an artist they knew, Shirley Akeroyd. My mother had it reframed years ago with non-glare glass which obscured the painting from the beginning and then discolored over time.

When the old glass was removed I was again delighted to see color and brushwork that I didn't remember having seen before. Since I wanted to keep the original frame I didn't hesitate to choose Museum Glass for the glazing. I think Museum Glass maybe one of the most exciting things I've come across in a long time.

Tru Vue

Mostarda di Mantova

Cooking with Amy

Mustard seed is also one of those things, like coffee or chocolate, that makes me wonder about the people who first thought to make something edible from it. Accounts vary widely but I think mustard seed was probably used to flavor something like mostarda and then came to dominate the condiment.

The last of the quince got a bit dry so I used it in a batch of mostarda. I used Amy Sherman's recipe and replaced the apple with quince.

Mustards

I love mustards, I suspect because, as my mother did, I love vinegar.

I used to have many varieties of mustard and vinegar in my pantry but I have cut way back on both. Even though I know it's still probably more than most people keep on hand, I take it as a small point of pride that I now limit myself to:

a Dijon, usually Grey Poupon
a classic yellow, French's, Plochman's or another
a course stoneground such as Pommery Moutarde de Meaux (if only I could figure out what to do with the crocks...)
Anton Kozlik's Triple Crunch and usually a couple of others from him
Ridley's Fuggle Mustard

And now perhaps my all-time, eat-it-with-a-spoon, favorite:

I first heard about this mustard in a newsletter from ChefShop.com and couldn't resist it at the mention of the Banyuls vinegar. I've ordered more from Honest Foods and this time it's coming in regular jars so I won't have to worry about anymore little crocks.

I am sorry this wonderful mustard comes all the way from California but at least one of the goodies I like to put in on comes from much closer to home:

Hartmann's smoked liverwurst

Buying Time

There are no longer any replacements for the hinges but the repairman seems confident a new heating element will give me time to make a decision about the oven, the cabinet, the rest of my life in a kitchen.

The entire world seems to be about buying time right now but of course that can't go on forever. I just wonder if the center can hold until spring...

Budget Buster

When we moved into this house we replaced very old, very beat-up built-in kitchen appliances. It didn't seem a wholly unreasonable thing to do since we weren't replacing the cabinets. It was only a couple of years ago when a stop on the oven door, possibly a spring, broke that I fully realized the additional cost of built-ins and that I was right and truly stuck with them.

Now the bottom heating element in the 23-year-old oven isn't working. I have to do something but I don't like my choices.

For one thing, I do not like 'stainless' appliances. I do not want my kitchen to look anything like a commercial enterprise and I do not want to clean more fingerprints than I already do but it's gotten nearly impossible to find anything other than 'stainless'.

It also irritates me no end that these things are being built with shorter and shorter life expectancies. I had to call Dacor to find out if they even make a replacement heating element and the young man I spoke to said they estimate the life of their new ovens to be seven to ten years!!! I don't know about Electrolux; I don't think I want to know.

What I would like to do is just bite the bullet, buy the Electrolux and slide it into the cabinet even if it doesn't fit perfectly.

But no, it won't fit, even imperfectly. It turns out manufacturers have resolved one of the problems I've had with my old oven, the shallow depth. The new ovens require the full cabinet depth and a junction box below the cutout floor.

We are now looking at a new oven and a new cabinet. Just shoot me.

The repairman comes today. I know it doesn't make much sense to put money into the old oven but even if we were ready to order things today it would several weeks before I would have a working oven again. I'm just hoping the heating element can be fixed...

And I'm just glad I wasn't planning to host Thanksgiving.

I Once Was Gaga for Aga

Thinking about the kitchen and ovens reminds me of one of my favorite fantasies, having an Aga cooker. Maybe I'll at least visit one again someday at The Sugartree.

Graham Hewison and Maxine Longmuir

A Cactus Reborn

My husband used to pick up a little floral item for my mother when he stopped to see her on his trips to visit his own family. Several years ago he gave her this Thanksgiving cactus. My mother liked it because even when it wasn't blooming it provided a welcome bit of color.

One night during her last winter at Governor's Pointe, the cactus froze when it was left on the sill of an open window. My mother kept it in its freeze-dried state until her move last November when I half-heartedly packed it with the stuff I brought home.

I don't really know why I bothered but I put it on the porch and every once in awhile I gave it some water. Last spring when I was potting up seedlings I finally repotted the cactus and a few weeks later I was astonished to see little bits of new growth. I've never had one of these cacti before so it's been fascinating to watch this sad thing come back to life after months of absolutely nothing.

And now it's blooming!

End of an Era

Every so often these days something reminds me anew my mother is gone. Not being able to share "The Goat Rodeo Sessions" with her (we listened to a lot of Yo Yo Ma in her last days) is one thing. My current jam & jelly inventory is another.

Over the years the jam making fell to me. After my mother moved to assisted living she actually went through more jam because she would take a jar to the dining room at breakfast and share it with her tablemates or give a jar to someone as a thank you gift.

Over the past year my mother wasn't using much jam at all and – I'm not sure why –  I haven't been giving away as much as I used to so now it comes as a bit of surprise every time I open the freezer door and see it only half-full.

(Even though I don't make freezer jam I keep my jam in a freezer because the color and the flavor hold up so much better.)

The Goat Rodeo Sessions

I haven't enjoyed a new recording this much in a long time. I can't count how many times I've played it in the past week and it's still making me smile.

Toni Onley 1928-2004

I first saw the work of Toni Onley in a gallery in Victoria, B.C. years ago. I always thought it would be a daunting task to chose one of the many luminous landscapes he painted but if I had $15,000 to spend today – and a wall big enough – I think I would chose the 40x30 oil, 

"Pond, Asuka, Japan".  

As it is I was happy to find a limited number of Onley's watercolors are still available as prints and from them we chose "Heel Rock" to commemorate #40 . I love it and at 27.5x21.5, framed, I didn't have to build an addition to hang it...

Autumn 2011

It has been a spectacular fall here and I feel lucky to have had the chance to get caught up on so much of what I wasn't able to do this summer. Last night it didn't get below 48º/9º and while I'm not sure that's a good thing, I'm happy to be heading back out this morning to reclaim the beds in the front of the house.

My father always insisted that an Indian Summer could only occur after a killing frost and while the temperatures may not be quite warm enough this week, it's Indian Summer in my book.

Garlic & Aioli

Thermadrone Garlic

I didn't plant garlic last year so I bought more than usual this year including a couple of first-time varieties, Thermadrone and Leningrad. I made aioli with three small cloves of the Thermadrone and after tasting it I selected twelve big cloves to plant in the garlic bed this past week. I really can taste the reason why this garlic is preferred for certain dishes.

I got  my Thermadrone, Metechi, Chesnook Red and some Nootka Rose in my first-time order from P D Farms through Gourmet Garlic Gardens. I will definitely order from them again; all the garlic I have from them is an exceptionally nice size, very clean and well cured. I've also planted some Music again, this time from another GGG grower closer to home, Eric Hickey. He also grows the Leningrad. Last but not least, I'm trying some Red Toch again from Big John's Garden. 

I know enough now to order early but I'm sorry that it was only after I had blown my garlic budget that I discovered an organic grower I patronized several years ago at the Regional Market is now exclusively growing garlic!

Homage to Tony Liu

What a truly glorious thing; this phal has been in bloom for over four MONTHS! I bought it last year when I was mourning a big phalaenopsis I'd lost after more than fifteen years, and this is the first rebloom. This year, for the first time I can remember, all my orchids bloomed at the same time but this one has lasted by far the longest with eighteen 4½" splendid blossoms.

Thank you Tony Liu.

I usually take a few minutes before I check out at Wegman's to look at the orchids from Tony Liu's The Orchid Place. Usually I'm satisfied to just look but this lovely pale pink phal came home with me and now it has done so well, seems to be so strong and healthy, that I may add another someday.

Sun & Snow

We couldn't manage a trip to the cape this month but it was important that I at least get to Massachusetts  to see my oldest living relative, my soon-to-be-97-year-old Aunt Bert. I was there for the first few inches of snow on Thursday but I left before the major storm on Saturday. I dread these early or late snow storms with heavy, wet stuff that takes down tree limbs and power lines and I feel for the people who are dealing with aftermath of this one.

Fortunately before the weather deteriorated I was able to have a good visit with my aunt and cousin. I stayed in the charming Chocksett Inn and we found a wonderful menu and great food at Cristina's.

Unfortunately I did not stop at the Donovan family farm in North Brookfield as I had hoped because my brother, for some unknown reason, still hasn't gotten around to sending me a portion of my mother's ashes to leave there. As far as I know he hasn't done anything with with them so today I'm going to call to tell him that I will be picking up the ashes and taking them to the cemetery myself before Thanksgiving. I will not leave Ohio without making sure this last bit of business is done and dusted.

Wool

due to arrive today from Aran Sweater Market

New subject: wool and whatever happened to it. 

I live where it's cold in the winter – and in the late fall and early spring. I live in a house that's old and bigger than two people really need so we try to keep the thermostat as low as we can. We dress for warmth.

I wear wool. I have a collection of wool sweaters but as I've had to retire a few of them in recent years, it has come as a great shock to discover how few wool sweaters are being sold now. It's one of my great regrets that I never mastered knitting so I don't know what I would do if it weren't for The Irish and their loyalty to the wool sweater. (Erin go bragh.)

There's another Irish-American who still seems to wear wool and doesn't he wear it well? I've been watching NBC's "Prime Suspect" in part because of Himself but wouldn't you know it, in this scene, Timoney (Bello) makes a crack about Sweeney's (Quinn) sweater! Arghh.

8:00 PM

The sweaters are perfect!