Last night, Clif and I went to Railroad Square Cinema in Waterville for the opening of a photography show featuring the works of—ta dah!—Clif, as well as another very talented photographer named Alec Hartman. The title of the show is Portals, and to quote Clif, “Photography is always looking through a portal—the lens and the camera—and the photographer looks at the world through the portal of his or her own consciousness.” The photographs in this show capture many different aspects of this definition of the word portal—from trees to subway exits to doors and windows.
The event was catered by Barrels Market, and the food was so good. There were platters of cheese and apple slices; olives, toasted pita bread, feta, hummus, and tomatoes; and smoked salmon, sliced baguette, onions, and a dip. For dessert, there were brownie bits, amazing little nuggets that were crisp on the outside and soft on the inside. I ate far more of these brownie bits than I should have, and I could have one right now. Emilie Knight, the daughter of my friend Margy Knight, prepared the food for this event, and what a terrific cook she is.
Many friends and supporters came to the opening, and we had a great time talking, eating, and looking at the photographs. The lobby was filled with the happy sound of engaged conversation, and many movie goers came over to nip some snacks and look at the photographs.
All of the pictures in this exhibit are for sale, with a third of the sale price going to support Maine Film Center and Railroad Square Cinema, two organizations that make central Maine a better place. The show runs until April 5, and readers who are within easy driving distance of Waterville should definitely check it out.
Here are some pictures taken at the opening of Portals:
The Mediterranean platterBrownie bits and wineClif and Rita MoranJoel Johnson, Clif, Mike Mulkeen, and Shannon MulkeenEmilie and Margy KnightCharlie Hartman, Karen Byrne, and Alec
A while back, as I was clipping coupons—yes, I am a coupon clipper—I came across a recipe called “One Skillet Tuna Noodles.” The basics were good—egg noodles, tuna, frozen vegetables, milk, and water. But then there was the problem ingredient—1 can of condensed cheddar cheese soup. Granted, the canned soup makes the preparation extremely speedy, and for many busy families, in the evening all they want is to put together quickly a fairly decent meal, for heaven’s sake. I understand that. In fact, I’ve been there myself when I worked outside the home and still had five people to feed every night.
But, I wondered, could I make a cheddar cheese sauce from scratch and still have the meal ready in a reasonable amount of time, say, under an hour? I decided to challenge myself with this recipe makeover.
First, a qualification. I am very, very comfortable making a basic white sauce, to which cheddar cheese can be added. Clif and I like casseroles with cheesy white sauces, and I make them fairly often. My vision of this skillet dish was basically as a casserole in a large frying pan. For people who are not as familiar with making a cheese sauce, the process might take a little longer.
Second, a hint. For speedy preparation, get everything ready ahead of time, or mise en place, as the French put it. This will ensure no last-minute awkward fumbling for this or that, which can really slow down the process and sometimes even ruin a meal.
The following is step-by-step instructions of what I did.
1. Set a large stock pot of salted water to boil on the stove.
2. Measure 9 ounces of egg noodles into a bowl and set by the stove.
3. Measure a cup of frozen vegetables—I used peas—and set by the stove. (Next time I would use 2 cups.)
4. When the water boils, add the noodles and the veggies, set the timer for 10 minutes, and put a colander in the sink. While the noodles are cooking, start getting everything in place.
4. Take out skillet. I used a big electric one.
5. Open a 6 ounce can of tuna, flake it in the can, and set by the skillet.
6. Mince 1 clove of garlic, put it in a small bowl, and set by the skillet.
7. Measure 4 tablespoons of flour into a small bowl. Add 1 teaspoon of salt and 1/4 teaspoon of pepper. (Actually, I just scrapped some pepper into the flour.) Set this by the skillet.
8. Cut up 4 tablespoons of butter and put into the unheated skillet.
9. Grate a cup of cheddar cheese and set by skillet.
10. Measure a cup and a half of milk. In a separate cup, measure a cup of sour cream. (Or plain yogurt. Or add another cup of milk if you don’t have yogurt or sour cream, so that you have two and half cups of milk.) Set by the skillet.
11. Measure 1 teaspoon of dried dill into a small bowl, and, you guessed it, set it by the skillet.
12. By now, perhaps even earlier, the noodles and veggies should be done. Drain them into the colander and let them set while you prepare the cheese sauce.
13. Heat the skillet using a medium heat—350 degrees in an electric skillet. Keep an eye on the butter and as soon as it is melted add the minced garlic. Let it sizzle for about 30 seconds.
14. Add the flour, salt, and pepper, and stir, stir, stir until the roux is a golden brown. This will take a couple of minutes.
15, Add the milk and stir until the mixture is thick and bubbling. In a big skillet, this shouldn’t take long.
16. Add the cheese, tuna, and the dill and stir until the cheese is melted.
17. Reduce the heat to low, and add the sour cream or yogurt, if using. Heat slowly—you don’t want the sour cream to curdle—until everything is warm.
18. Add the noodles and the peas, and again, heat slowly until the mixture is very warm but not bubbling.
And there you have it. A skillet dinner with a cheese sauce made from scratch. The whole process, from beginning to end, took me 30 minutes. Not as speedy as opening a can of soup, but an acceptable amount of time nonetheless.
This could never be considered a company dish, but it is warm, tasty, frugal, and pretty quick to make. Clif had 2 servings and pronounced it “Not too bad,” which in Yankee parlance means good enough.
Here are some pictures Clif took of me as I made the white sauce and then added the rest of the ingredients:
Stirring the rouxAdding the cheese and tuna after the milk has been addedStirring in the sour creamAdding the noodles and peas after the sour cream has been added. The heat is on low, and everything is gently warmed.Suppa is ready
On Saturday, I went to a baby shower. I have known Sara, the mother-to-be, since she was a little girl, and what a pleasure it is to see how she has become a lovely young woman who is now—with her husband, Russ—starting her own family. The cycle continues with new life, and with it comes hope and joy. Beth, Sara’s mother, and I have now become the older generation, the matriarchs of the family, and we are stepping into the roles that our own mothers had not so long ago.
Sara and Russ have chosen not to know the sex of the baby, so the little one was referred to as baby Lozefski—Sara and Russ’s last name. Fittingly, the theme of the shower was jungle animals, good for either a boy or a girl—what’s not to like about toy animals?—and the cake had zebras, giraffes, and elephants marching across the frosting. However, as the younger, progressive women—Sara’s sister and cousins—were quick to point out, nowadays it’s perfectly fine for babies, regardless of their gender, to wear any and every color. Right on!
A wild cake
Beth, an accomplished quilter, made the sweetest quilt for the baby, her first grandchild. In keeping with the jungle theme, Zebras frolic on the quilt. Will the baby have jungle dreams, I wonder?
Jungle dreams
Because I am a good eater, I quite naturally took several pictures of the food. What a tasty spread! Family and friends came together to provide food for the buffet, and I love these homegrown affairs.
Sara—and baby Lozefski—received a flood of tiny socks, sleepers, bibs, and outfits, with the last items unwrapped being just as adorable as the first. Lisa, Sara’s sister, is a teacher, and when it comes to babies, she thinks along the same lines as I do—books, books, books. Lisa went to various books sales and bought classic books that were in good shape. Then, she bundled them in a basket and commissioned a little pig to stand guard over the books, which included Make Way for Ducklings and my personal favorite, Where the Wild Things Are.
Books, books, books
As I mentioned in a previous post, I, too, bought books for the new baby. Fortunately, there were no overlaps between what I bought—Talking Walls and You’re Wearing That to School?—and what Lisa bought. Baby Lozefski will not only be well dressed, but he or she will also have the start of a terrific collection of children’s books.
A loving family, lots of soft clothes to wear, a warm quilt, plenty of books. What a great way to start!
Snow, snow, and more snow. There will be no drought problems in Maine this spring, and for this, I suppose, we must be grateful. In addition, the days are getting longer, and yesterday the backyard thermometer, always in shade, actually reached 50 degrees. The dog and I went outside and did a happy dance.
This weekend, I am going to a baby shower. The mother-to-be is the daughter of friends, and I have known her since she was a little girl. I love going to baby showers—new life on the way!—and although I always bring books for presents, I so enjoy seeing all the little clothes and the other baby things.
From the PBS Newshour: Picturing hunger in America. “Hunger Free Colorado give cameras to food stamp recipients and asks them to chronicle what it’s like to be hungry in America.”
I know. The title of this post is akin to the miracle of the fish and the loaves. However, no miracles were performed. Instead, just some thrifty stretching of food with my trusty slow-cooker. Also, I want to hasten to add that these 3 meals were for Clif and me, just the 2 of us. Yet even with this qualification, 3 meals from 2 chicken breasts and 4 sweet potatoes come under the heading of pretty darned frugal, which can only be a good thing during this very cold winter. And tasty, too, if I do say so myself.
Here is what I did. I took 4 medium sweet potatoes and cut them into large cubes. (I didn’t peel them.) I sprinkled salt and pepper on them and added a cup of water. I put two large chicken breasts on top of the sweet potatoes and seasoned them with more salt and pepper as well as thyme and sage. (I didn’t measure. I just sprinkled liberally.) Then I added two cloves of minced garlic. Onion lovers could certainly substitute or add onions as well. I set the slow-cooker on high and let everything cook for about 4 hours.
On night 1, we each had half a chicken breast and some sweet potatoes. Clif and I could have eaten more, but we refrained, which meant that we had both leftover chicken and sweet potatoes. Also, there was a lovely broth from the water and the chicken. I removed the chicken and sweet potatoes from the broth, and put them into separate containers.
Because I have a large refrigerator, I left the broth in the slow-cooker’s crockery and tucked the whole thing in the refrigerator. The next day, I used this as the base for meal 2.
I put the crockery with the broth into the base of the slow cooker, and turned it to high. I added 4 cups of water; 1 whole onion, peeled; 2 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped; 1/2 teaspoon of salt; and 1/4 teaspoon of ground pepper. (Actually, I didn’t measure the pepper. I just ground some in.) If I had had some celery, I would have included a rib or two in the stock, but I didn’t.
I let the stock bubble on high for about 5 hours. Then, I removed the onion. Into the slow cooker, I added the sweet potatoes, with the skins removed, and using my immersion blender, I pureed the sweet potatoes into the stock. Right there, I had a lovely, creamy soup that would have been fine just as it was.
However, Clif likes his soup to have ingredients, and if we do have a creamy soup, he loads it with crushed saltine crackers. Knowing his preference, I usually add ingredients to most every soup I make. So into the sweet potato soup I added the leftover chicken, chopped into large pieces, and 2 cans of black beans. In the refrigerator, we had leftover couscous, and I added that as well, but any small- or medium-sized pasta would work. (Because pasta and couscous have a tendency to swell, the next time I make this soup, I would add warm pasta or couscous or even rice to the bottom of each serving bowl and ladle the soup on top.)
I made some biscuit muffins to go with the soup, and Clif was a happy husband.
The third meal, of course, was leftover soup and biscuit muffins.
Now, this kind of meal could be amended in a couple of ways. For those living alone and who have a small slow-cooker—yes, Megan, I am directing this at you—the ingredients could be halved, and you would get at least two meals from this. For those with a bigger family, load that slow-cooker right up. In fact, maybe even have 2 of them going.
However it is done, you will still have 2 or 3 thrifty meals, perfect for this time of year when the nights are long and oh so cold.
For over a week, I have had some kind of flu/virus that has taken the wind out of my sails, as the saying goes. The past few days have been the worse, with much coughing and little sleeping. I’ve spent quite a bit of time on the couch, and I’ve forced myself to do a few chores so that the house won’t look too bad when I am well again. But what an effort everything is. I don’t have the focus to post recipes on this blog—I have a couple in mind, and I’m just waiting for this darned flu to say adios—and I don’t have the focus to work on fiction. I can’t go for walks in the woods.
Because I can’t be my usual busy self, time itself seems to have slowed down. Yesterday, after taking a short catnap on the couch, I woke up and thought it was at least 6:30. Instead, it was only 5:00, with the whole long night ahead of me. As I didn’t get to sleep until 2:00 a.m., the night was very long indeed.
This enforced inactivity has made me realize how much I enjoy my busy life, a combination of cooking, writing, chores, family, reading, volunteering, meeting with friends, and, this time of year, taking walks in the wood. Couch and tea time are ever so much more enjoyable at the end of a busy day rather than as a continuum of a long, idle afternoon spent waiting to feel better.
So there it is. I enjoy being busy. I like being productive and useful. Having a list of projects adds pep to my life.
As there is plenty to do in this life, in this rural state, in this little town, I never have to wonder how to fill my hours. And as soon as this virus goes away, I’ll gratefully return to my busy routine, ordinary yet oh so absorbing.
The good news is, we didn’t lose our power. The bad news is, the snow is extremely heavy and thus hard to move. And there’s a lot of it at the little house in the big woods. Thanks goodness for Little Green, our electric snow-thrower. For years, Clif and I shoveled by hand the driveway and the backyard pathways, but no more. If Little Green ever stops working, we will buy a replacement. Pronto. Even with Little Green’s help, there is plenty to shovel, and I will be working at it off and on during the day. Nature’s gym! However, I must admit I’m more than a little “winter weary.”
Winter weary or not, Happy Valentine’s Day to all. I hope it is a sweet one with plenty of chocolate.
From NPR’s the salt: If you hate skim or low-fat milk, then here comes some good news. According to the salt, “two recent studies…conclude the consumption of whole fat dairy is linked to reduced body fat.”
From Mother Earth News: ‘Tis still the season for soup, and here’s a bean soup recipe that sounds warm and hearty.
Another day, another snow storm. This one, coming from the South, is a true Nor’easter, and the prediction is that we’ll get at least a foot of snow. Maybe more. I’m sure I’m not the only who wished the darned thing had just blown out to sea. Ah, well. It is February in Maine.
In central Maine, it started to snow at 11:00 a.m., and I decided to take the dog for a walk in the woods before the weather got too bad. Into the woods we went—me with my ski pole to help steady myself on the trail, and Liam with his usual light feet. How wonderful it is that he is still so spry at nine years old.
We were gone for about 40 minutes, and the snow fell softly on us, on the trail, on the frozen lake. In the distance, I heard snowmobiles, but none of them came close to us, and the dog could trot freely off-leash.
Liam on the Upper Narrows
When we came back, I made bread, and as I did so, I periodically looked out the kitchen window into the backyard. Gray and red squirrels were nipping food from the bird feeders. For a moment, I was tempted to let the dog out back to chase them away. But then I thought of the storm and winter and how squirrels get hungry, too, and I kept the dog inside.
Birds also came to the feeders, and the backyard was aflutter with them—chickadees, woodpeckers, tufted titmice, and gold finches. On the ground, mourning doves pecked at seed that had spilled from the feeder. Behind the squirrels and the birds, the dark woods were still, and the snow continued to fall softly on everything.
One of the things I love most about winter is seeing bare branches against a bright blue sky. I never get tired of the stark beauty of the trees silhouetted against the sky. When I walk in the woods, I tend to look up, and I have to be careful I don’t trip. Another thing I like about the bare branches is that they reveal things—such as squirrels’ nests—that are hidden when the trees have leaves.
Last Friday, I drove to Portland for a book launch party for Talking Walls: Discover Your World, written by my friend Margy Burns Knight. (Clif was supposed to go, but he had caught a nasty virus and quite sensibly stayed home.) The party was held at Mainely Frames & Gallery, right on Congress Street, and the whole store was decked out with Talking Walls related displays—from art work by the talented Anne Sibley O’Brien, who illustrated the book, to a mannequin “reading” Talking Walls in the big window at the front of the store.
That Friday was also Portland’s First Friday Art Walk, and Congress Street had the air of a carnival. Lots of people were on the street, and many stores were open, featuring art displays and offering free food. There were even street artists, set up with little stands to display their art. Where else but in Maine would anyone even think of doing this in February? I wish I had had some extra money. I would have bought something from one of those plucky street artists.
I did, of course, buy a copy of Talking Walls, and it was beautifully signed—I mean this literally—by Anne Sibley O’Brien and Margy Knight. This book will go to Sara, a young woman who will soon be having a baby. I have known Sara since she was a little girl. I went to her wedding several years ago, and now I am going to her baby shower. And, as I’ve mentioned previously, when I go to baby showers, I like to bring books as presents.
The food at the reception was made by Margy’s daughter, Emilie Knight and her partner, David Gulak. The food was delicious, especially a blueberry ricotta spread with balsamic vinegar and roasted garlic. Using what I think might be the right proportions, I will definitely try making this spread at home. Emilie and David are starting a catering service called Knilak’s Catering, and their business is so new that it doesn’t have a website yet. However, for information about catering, Emilie can be reached at emilie.m.knight@gmail.com.
Tasty food provide by Knilak’s Catering.
Lots of people came to the book launch party, and many of them were Margy’s friends from central Maine. Books, good food, friends, and art. What a fine way to spend a clear, cold night in February.
I’m going to end this post where I began, with Talking Walls. Here is a quotation about the book from Margy’s website: “Visit walls of joy and of sadness, walls built to protect people or to keep them apart.”
Yes, indeed.
Anne Sibley O’Brien and Margy Burns Knight
A blog about nature, home, books, movies, television, food, and rural life.
Notes From the Hinterland 