Getting Ready

Jul 11, 2009 | This Life

 

Snickers keeping watch over the preparations on the porch

 

It’s Saturday. In just a few short hours our celebration begins. The  cake is baked but still needs a good frosting. The house is clean, but will probably get one more pass with the vacuum if I know IZ. I even tackled the horror that was our refrigerator and returned victorious!  Most of my list is lined-out and there is just enough time to do a bit of gardening at a leisurely pace. 

But first, I think I’ll wake this household with scones and coffee. Because, around here, scones are an important part of the “getting ready” ritual. 

Abundance

Jul 10, 2009 | This Life

 

 

One of the perks of living in this small town has to be the ardent dahlia fanciers who are generous enough to share their passion. Every summer, several homes set up flower stands offering their prized blooms for sale. It’s become the my little luxury, despite all the roses blooming in my own yard. Each week, I stop by my favorite stand and scoop up an armful. Really, who can argue with $2 bouquets? 

It’s still a wee bit early in the season, but I took a chance and was delighted to discover that my favorite haunt had exactly two bouquets left. Just enough!  Which, when you think about it is an excellent way of viewing abundance.

Avert Your Eyes, Martha Stewart

Jul 9, 2009 | This Life

About that pie crust. . . 

 

When we were first married, Iz and I moved sight unseen into a tiny apartment in Seattle. Leaving California was an adventure. But after a few months of nasty notes left on our car telling us to “go home” and the onset of less than warm weather, homesickness set in. Big time. And I did want good southern girls do when they’re homesick. I baked.

I’d always been a baker. Not much of cook, but I am a veritable Rumpelstiltskin with sugar.  However, pie was always my mother’s purview. And pie, my dear friends, is sacramental in our culture. You show up to my Aunt’s for Thanksgiving and you’ll count no less than half a dozen different pies. Cherry, Apple, Pumpkin, Mince, Chocolate, Pecan, Lemon Meringue. Plus a Banana Pudding thrown in for good measure. It’s a southern thing, we eat pie. 

I left pie baking to the professionals and focused on cake and brownies and cookies–oh, and out of this world truffles, which technically fall under candy, but you take my point. It wasn’t until my early married life that I decided I would not be intimidated by pastry. I would seize my unused pastry cutter and get on with it. I set out to perfect my crust making ability and well, that takes practice.

Poor IZ. For awhile he got a pie a week. Apple. Because I abhor Apple pie, and I figured if I made a pie I didn’t like, I wouldn’t eat it. That and we were dirt poor and apples were dirt cheap Over and over I made pie crust and I discovered it was darn easy and I was very good at it. Beautiful pie after beautiful pie was consumed, because it’s IZ’s culture to never let a pie go to waste. I like that about him

It was years before I realized I didn’t know squat about making pie crust. While I owned a copy of every book Martha Stewart had written at the time, I didn’t bother to crack one on my odysey of pie baking. There was no point. Everybody knows that you when you make pie crust dough, you use Crisco. Well, everybody in my world. It says so right there in my Vintage Better Homes and Garden’s Cookbook. 

(Although, I do have one Auntie who uses the pat-in-pan method which calls for oil. Her crust is, by  far, the best I’ve ever had.)

Years later, many many pies later, I would discover that the recipe page for pie crust in that very vintage cookbook had disappeared. If you ask me, Martha took it on one of her visits to my house. She denies that, however, suggesting it probably got lost in one of my many moves.  

Enter Martha and her butter based pie crust recipe.   It was omen. I grasped the opportunity to study as an acolyte at the shrine to Martha that was my kitchen. I mean, how hard could it be?

Apparently, butter is not Crisco. No matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t master Martha’s pie crust with any consistency.  In fact, each succeeding attempt just got worse. The crust never seemed to come together–either too lumpy and thick resembling short-bread or too thin and oily and refusing to actually be crust.  Tasty they might be, but beautiful they were not.  My pies, made with love and quickly consumed were ugly. I would serve them with a well-honed qualification, “It’s delicious but ugly.” And that’s how my pies ended up with the moniker “Butt Ugly Pies.” You see the pun right? Because my then 9 year old did and it stuck!

I’m pretty certain in all her years of baking, Martha never turned out a Butt Ugly Pie. I was a failure. I couldn’t make a pretty pie. Not even if Martha was sitting in her shrine, dressed in linen and well heeled shoes giving pointers. No amount of sprinkling ice water was just right, no method of measuring flour made me more competent, not even the best in pastry cutters could solve my problem. 

You’ll blame it on humidity or poor technique. My butter wasn’t cold enough, my flour wasn’t gourmet enough. But honestly, it’s because Martha is a Northerner. If she’d been born in the South, she’d be baking pie crust with Crisco and you wouldn’t be reading this.

So this 4th of July, I put a moratorium on Butt Ugly Pies. No more. I bought some butter flavored Crisco and made pie like all good southern girls do. I looked at IZ and flatly proclaimed, “I don’t really care about your arteries, my pie is going to be beautiful.”

And it was. 

 

 

 

Perfect

Jul 7, 2009 | This Life

I’m sitting here with The Cure blasting in my ears . . . “‘You and me are the world,’ she said. Nothing else is real. . . ”  But, I can imagine the non-stop whirrr coming from the new vacuum. Our old vacuum officially died last week. However, it had  been on its last legs for at least six months. I shudder at how dirty my floors must be. IZ is busily making up for lost time, giving our pitiful house a serious once over.  A man who not only cooks but vacuums? Yeah, hat makes him the perfect boy. 

July has been, dare I jinx it, perfect too. Today’s rain never really appeared, although it looks like it might try again tonight. Instead, we got big blustery  clouds and sun breaks.  There is something ever so magical about sunlight when you’ve been promised rain. The texture, the quality of light paints large landscapes–every street lights up, beckoning you to walk down just one more lane. I remarked to IZ, on our brisk hike to the top of the hill this morning, “It’s like those old movies, where the pioneers are cresting the mountain and look down on the valley below—it’s all romantic and inviting. You feel like you’ve arrived!”  He humors me. I can’t help it, sunlight makes me giddy.

So, he’s busy making my house clean and I’m telling you what a goof I can be when I’m oxygen deprived and basking in warm rays. (Uh, I hiked a hill, hello asthma!) But tomorrow I’m on call with this grubby house. We’re in deep clean mode these days, anticipating a visit on Saturday with IZ’s sister,  Cheryl.  Dare  I say she’s my favorite sister-in-law? 

It’s probably impolitic to have a favorite, eh? Well, let me tell you why I adore my sister-in-law. She’s IZ’s older sister. He’s the baby of 8 and she was nearly 17 when he was born. In many ways, she’s been a “mother” figure to him. Although we don’t say that directly, because she still seems so young. She’s one of those people who never seems to age–and yet always makes you feel beautiful. She listens, really listens. She brings little gifts every time she visits. And don’t hear me wrong, it’s not the gift it’s the fact she does it. You know? She’s present and connected and so gracious. 

She was the first of our family to come meet our son when he was born and she’s been the most involved Aunt. She sends Boy Wonder all these sweet notes in the mail. In fact, they’ve developed quite the friendship via snail mail. She jots down her thoughts on scraps of paper as she commutes.  He responds in that stilted way 12 year olds tend to write. He still can’t read her writing (though it’s quite pretty and legible by my  standards!) so I get the privilege of reading her letters to him—it’s like peeking into their private world.  She tells him about her travels and what IZ was like as a child. She gives our son a connection to something bigger, wider than just his parents. And, sadly, our child just isn’t that connected to family—time and distance (and really, emotional inability) have played a big role in that regard. So, she represents the notion of extended family for our son, and for that I’m eternally grateful.

Anyhow, she is expected on Saturday. Her arrival has me doing a prepositional clean on the space. Not that she would notice the grime or the disorder—but I would. She and IZ share a birthday month and so in addition to cleaning like a mad person (Hello, dust on the picture rail. Be gone with you!) I’m also planning a lovely party on the porch. There is cake to be baked and a menu to shop for, it’s going to be a busy week. Saturday’s weather is promising, dare I jinx it,  to be sunny and in the 70’s.  I’m not worried. Because you know,  dear readers,  I have faith it’s going to be perfect.

The Arrival of Summer

Jul 1, 2009 | This Life

What an amazing start to a lovely month—today was gloriously warm and sunny and everything you could want from a summer day. Typically, this kind of weather doesn’t arrive here on the coast until after the 4th of July. so my little family has been reveling in this turn of good weather. We began our holiday celebrations early this evening with dinner on our tangy porch—sipping margaritas and coffee, hamming it up with the camera, taking in the view with the amazing telescope IZ’s father sent us, and enjoying just being together. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate the official arrival of our beloved Summer. Can you?