All posts by Laurie Graves

I write about nature, food, the environment, home, family, community, and people.
Food, People

Lunch with Piper and Beth

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Yesterday, I was invited to have lunch with my friend Beth and her granddaughter Piper, who soon will be two.

Before lunch we played a game of peekaboo.

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Then came a wonderful lunch of chicken salad with grapes, almonds, and a bit of marmalade with the mayonnaise; raspberry muffins; and cantaloup.  For dessert, hermit cookies. Let’s just say my reputation as A Good Eater remains untarnished.

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After lunch, we had tea and chatted while Piper played, involving us from time to time in say, ball or change the baby doll’s diaper.

All too soon, it was time to leave so that Piper could have stories and a nap.

Before I left, I said, “When the weather is good, come join Liam and me for a walk on the trails behind the Winthrop high school.”

“Piper has a jogging stroller,” Beth said. “And we’ve gone on the trails in Vaughn woods.”

“Then trails at the high school shouldn’t give you any problem,” I said.

Piper blew me a kiss, and I blew one back. As I drove home, I thought about what I would have for Beth and Piper after the walk. A light lunch, perhaps, and some little toy—toy farm animals or dinosaurs for Piper to play with.

I’ll be on the lookout.

Food, Movies

Pizza, Pumpkin Roll, and Monsoon Wedding

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Last night was movie night at the little house in the big woods, where we were joined by three friends—Alice and Joel and Diane—to watch and discuss a movie. Last night was Alice’s turn to choose, and she picked Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding.

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The movie came out in 2001, and this was a second viewing for all of us.  Alice and Joel told of how they saw Monsoon Wedding for the first time at the Toronto Film Festival, right after the terrorist attacks on September 11. A joyous, bright film about an arranged marriage in India, Monsoon Wedding was just what Alice and Joel needed to see after the terrible attacks. (Can fifteen years have really passed since that dreadful day? We had a daughter living in New York City and another one living in Washington, DC. It is a day Clif and I will not forget.)

But back to movie night. Clif made two of his delectable pizzas. We always mean to get a picture of them, but somehow, between the rush to eat and watch the movie, we never do.

We were more on top of things with the beautiful dessert—a pumpkin roll—that Alice made. As soon I saw that roll, I knew it should have its picture taken.

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I am happy to report that the pumpkin roll tasted just as good as it looked. After watching Monsoon Wedding, we had coffee, tea, and pumpkin roll as we discussed the various aspects of the movie—in particular, arranged marriages. While acknowledging there were no guarantees with any marriage, I noted how strange it would be to marry someone you had never met or seen.

“Different customs for different cultures,” Diane observed, and how right she is.

We can be grateful to movies and books (and blogs!) that bring us glimpses of other cultures. They remind us that the world is full of diversity, and they enlarge our perspective, which is always a good thing.

Food, Movies

Youth and Gelato: A Trip to Brunswick

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Yesterday, Clif and I took the afternoon off and headed to Brunswick for a movie and gelato. We had a gift certificate for each event, which meant that except for the gas, the outing was free—our favorite price.

Brunswick has an arty downtown filled with cafés and restaurants and various other shops. While it’s fun to walk on the sidewalks and look at the window displays, crossing the street is another matter. For some inexplicable reason, four lanes go through the downtown, and getting across them can feel like a heroic effort. There is only one spot with a sort of island and a walk signal to help pedestrians cross. Otherwise, it’s just a crosswalk. Hoping that cars will see you and therefore stop, you hold your breath as you scurry across the road.

But Clif and I made it safely across the road to Eveningstar Cinema, which shows independent films. We went to see Youth, directed by Paolo Sorrentino, who seems to be Fellini’s artistic, if not actual, heir. Odd characters are liberally sprinkled throughout this film—a grotesquely obese former sports star; a masseuse with jug ears, braces, and a rodent-like face; an expressionless woman who makes giant soap bubbles for the evening’s entertainment.

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Youth is set in a resort in the Swiss Alps, and the resort is frequented by the weary one percent, who all appear as though they are about to die of ennui. Somehow, though, despite the the odd characters and the stylized and often surreal look of the film, Youth is a moving exploration of old age and the regret and diminishment that come with it.  At the center of the story are Fred Ballinger, a composer, and Mick Boyle, a movie director. They are played respectively, and wonderfully, by Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel, who in real life do not at all seem to be diminished by age.

The esoteric Youth is not what I would call a crowd pleaser—although there were plenty of people who came to see it on a Wednesday afternoon at 1:30—but both Clif and I are admirers of this director, who manages to combine surrealism with deep emotion, not an easy trick.

After the movie, we again courted death by crossing the main street to have gelato at the incomparable Gelato Fiasco, where we both had hazelnut and chocolate. So very good.

Since December, the days have gotten longer, and we were able to make it home before dark. The older I get, the more I like this, especially during the winter.

The afternoon had been sunny and fifty degrees warmer than it was on Sunday. What a wild swing! However, this meant the house was warm, and there were still coals in the wood furnace. Clif had no problem restarting the fire.

For our supper we had chili on baked potatoes—I keep cans of chili in the pantry for just such an occasion, when we are out and about and want an easy meal to fix when we come home. A cozy, hearty supper after a good afternoon in Brunswick.

 

 

cooking

How I Learned to Roll Pie Dough

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Yesterday, as I was rolling the dough for our quiche, Clif said, “You sure do know how to roll pie dough.”

I laughed. “And no wonder. I’ve rolled out dough for hundreds of pies.”

Not because our family eats so much pie—although we like pie as well as the next family—but instead because when I was a young woman, I worked in the bakery in one of the dining halls at Colby College in Waterville. Everything was made from scratch, including the pies, and we would spend entire afternoons rolling dough.

Fran York was the head baker, and she was the nicest boss I have ever had. Soft spoken and cheerful, Fran set a calm but hard-working tone, and there was never an ounce of drama in her bakery. She had that elusive quality that so many bosses don’t have—-in her own quiet way, she made us want to work as hard as we possibly could. But she never badgered, harangued, or scolded us. We just wanted to do our best for Fran.

She came in early and worked until 3:00 p.m., leaving us, her assistants, to finish the work we had started. On one particular day, it was pies.

“We need one hundred and fifty” Fran said. “But if you do seventy-five, that will be fine. We can roll out the rest tomorrow morning.”

Then she left, and there were two of us, one of whom was Fran’s mother. Unfortunately, I can’t remember her name, but she was a lively woman, a southerner, an extrovert—unlike Fran—and oh so fun to work with. “Son a’gun!” was one of her favorite sayings when something surprised her. Like Fran, she was a hard worker.

“What do you say?” she asked after Fran had left. “Let’s see if we can roll out all those pies by the time we leave.”

And so we began. The flour flew, the rolling pins thumped against the big work table, and pie after pie was made. Five, ten, twenty-five, fifty.

Fran’s mother sang, “Can she make a cherry pie, Billy boy, Billy boy? Can she make a cherry pie, charming Billy?”

We were, of course, making cherry pies, and I grinned as Fran’s mother sang.

We reached one hundred. “We’re almost there!” Fran’s mother cried.

More flour flew, and the thumping of the rolling pins grew louder. “One hundred and fifty,” came the triumphant call. “With plenty of time to clean up.”

My apron was covered with flour, and my face had a fair share, too. But I felt triumphant. We had exceeded Fran’s expectations.

The next day when I came in, Fran said, “My, you two did a good job yesterday. Look at all those pies ready to bake.”

I felt as though I had been given a prize—praise from Fran.

“Oh, we worked right along, didn’t we, Laurie?” said Fran’s mother.

We certainly did.

And forty years later, how did my one little quiche turn out?

“Pretty darned good,” my Yankee husband said.

Addendum: About all those cherry pies: I forget to mention that the pie filling and the dough were made ahead of time for us. All we had to do was roll. And, it took us hours. We were working the late shift, and we rolled until the end.

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Home, Nature

One Cold Valentine

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The headlines in the Sunday paper got it just right—“Caution urged as teeth-chattering cold moves in: Wind chill temperatures could hit 35 below in parts of New England.”

The cold has certainly come to central Maine. When we got up this morning, there was ice on the inside of the windows, which melted as Clif stoked the wood furnace and brought the inside temperature up to something approaching warm.

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Clif, intrepid soul that he is, still took the dog for a walk up and down the road. When he came back, he snapped a picture of our outside thermometer. As we Mainers might say, it was a little brisk outside.

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On such a cold Valentine’s day, we both decided that a special breakfast was in order, and Clif made eggs and toast.

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To celebrate Valentine’s Day, we had originally planned to go to a movie and then out for gelato afterwards. But the cold changed our minds. Instead, we decided to stay home, where we could tend the fire in the wood furnace. We do have back-up heat—propane and electric—but nothing warms a cold house the way wood does.

This evening, I’ll be making a quiche with smoked cheddar, a rich dish for special occasions only. We’ll have a couple of rum and cokes and listen to music. We’ll watch a movie at home.

In the next few days, the weather is supposed to be significantly warmer. Then, we’ll venture forth for that movie and gelato.

Until then, we’ll stay in our own snug house.

Animals - especially dogs, Food, Home

Creature Comforts in Deep Winter

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Yesterday, I wrote about the spiritual comfort that books can bring to us during hard times. Today, my mind is on creature comforts, and no wonder because in Maine, we are in deep winter.  The days might be getting longer—it doesn’t get dark now until 5:30—but they are cold, clear, and crisp. Unless it is snowing, of course.

This morning when Clif took the dog for a walk, it was dead calm and zero degrees. (Fahrenheit). At that temperature, the snow squeaks underfoot, and the warmest of winter clothes is needed—heavy coat, heavy gloves, hat, scarf—or neck warmer—thick boots. In deep winter, all sense of fashion is abandoned. The chief thing is to stay warm.

In the house this morning, the temperature was just below 60 degrees. We heat with a wood furnace, and in February it doesn’t quite make it through the night. This is why we sleep with piles of blankets pulled up to our noses so that we have a little tent for warmth.

This cold morning, it was very hard to get out of our warm bed. When we did get up and raised the shades, we found that the windows were frosted.

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But soon Clif had the furnace going, and it wasn’t long before the house was a balmy sixty-four degrees. Throughout the day, the wood and the sun will raise the inside temperature to a little under seventy degrees, which is plenty cozy for us.

For this time of year, chicken soup is just the thing. One day, I cook a chicken, and we eat some of the meat. The next day, I make chicken stock using onion, garlic, carrots, whole cloves, peppercorns, a bay leaf, salt, thyme, and sage. Into the stock pot go the bones with the leftover meat. I cover them with water, add the other ingredients, and bring everything to a gentle simmer. I let the stock bubble for hours, until the house is fragrant with the smell, and Clif and I can hardly wait until dinner.

After the stock has simmered for hours, I strain the stock into a big pot, and let the bones cool before picking the meat. More carrots go into the stock, and because we are Mainers, potatoes often go in, too.  The vegetables simmer until they are tender,  and then I add the picked meat. A variation on this is to leave out the potatoes and instead go with pasta or rice. The pasta and rice and are never simmered into the soup because if they are, whatever is leftover will swell into alarming proportions. Instead, we cook pasta and rice separately, put them into the bottom of our bowls, and ladle the hot soup on top.

What to serve with chicken soup? Homemade bread is good, as are biscuits, but Clif and I seem to prefer cornbread, which from beginning to end takes about thirty minutes to make and bake.

When the soup is ready, when the cornbread is done, we settle into the evening with our steaming bowls of comfort. “Pretty darned good,” Clif pronounces, and he always goes back for seconds.

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However, the last word of comfort must go to Sherlock because no creature knows comfort the way a cat does. Unless, of course, it’s a hobbit.

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Books, Food for Thought

Comfort Me with Reading

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In Maine, winter is the perfect time for reading. The days are short, and aside from shoveling, outside chores are few. There are always inside chores, of course, but even so there are plenty of quiet opportunities for reading.

This winter, I have been thinking about the various reasons we read. On a pragmatic level, we read for basic information—manuals, how-to books, tutorials on the Internet. These can be a big help with projects as diverse as cooking to the most cost-effective way to fence in your yard for the dog.

We also read for intellectual ideas, and right now I’m slowly and with great difficulty working my way through Michael Lewis’s The Big Short. At times, I am absolutely stupefied by so much technical information about the workings of Wall Street, but still I read on, figuring that even if I only absorb a fraction of the book, I will know more than I did before I started.

We read for enlightenment and enlargement. For this we usually turn to the great novels—Middlemarch, Pride and Prejudice, Crime and Punishment, Moby Dick. Often these books require effort on our part, but when we are finished, we feel as though we have gained a glimpse of something essential about life and human nature.

Last but certainly not least, we read for pleasure and comfort. The value of this kind of reading cannot (and should not) be underestimated. Life can be joyous, but it can also be hard, and the older a person becomes, the more loss she or he has endured. Loved ones die, illness comes. That is the way of things, and somehow we must cope.

When life becomes hard, I turn to books for comfort, often Miss Read.  Somehow, reading about life in an English village in the 1950s has a calming effect on me.  I am always absorbed by the descriptions of nature, the sympathetic yet shrewd take on human nature, and the humor.

Lately, I have discovered Gervase Phinn, another English writer. (Do you think there is a trend here?) Phinn writes memoirs of his time as a school inspector in North Yorkshire, beginning in the 1980s. He is not a great stylist, but his books have a wonderful narrative flow, with vivid descriptions of teachers, students, parents, and colleagues. And, he makes me laugh out loud, to the point where my husband looks at me with raised eyebrows as I chortle over a passage in Phinn’s books. How often do books make us laugh? In my experience, not very often, and a book that does is a little gem.

I have been thinking that I should start collecting “comfort” books for my home library. (I already have several Miss Read books.) That way, the books will be right there when I need them, and I can also let friends borrow them when they are going through their own hard times.

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Nature

The Look of Winter

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February is back, and how glad I am to see it. Yesterday, we got four inches of light, fluffy snow that will be easy to clear. Readers will be happy to know that Clif and I came home from doing errands just as the first snowflakes started falling. While leftover soup heated, we put away our groceries and other sundry items. Then, as we ate our soup—spicy squash with chicken sausage—we watched the snow come down, down, down. So lovely to watch when you’re snug at home with a bowl of hot soup to eat.

As I have indicated in previous posts, I really like winter—December, January, and February. I was born in central Maine, in September, which means my earliest memories involve snow and cold. I can remember having my picture taken on the mailbox of our new house, the first for my parents, who came from poor families and were rightly proud of their little home. I must have been two or three, and I am bundled in a winter coat, mittens, and a brown fuzzy hat. I remember squinting because the sun was in my eyes, but I don’t remember feeling cold.

In fact, as a child, I do not ever remember feeling cold. My mother, who was very attentive, made sure I was warmly dressed, and out I went to play.  I skated, I went sliding, I dug snow caves, and I had snowball fights with other children in the neighborhood.  No doubt I came in with red cheeks, but I was never uncomfortable.

Even now, I do not mind the cold, and because of this, I love and appreciate the look of winter. This morning, after the little storm, our yard was filled with blue shadows and glittering snow.

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Even our porch had blue-slanted shadows across it.

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And, as Clif put it, the car looked like a marshmallow puff.

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In the backyard, goldfinches crowded the feeder, and they twittered as they ate.

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The clothesline will not be used for another few months, not until April, when I will happily begin hanging out quilts and blankets and the rest of our laundry.

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Until then, I will enjoy the beauty of winter, the cold and the quiet and the blue shadows.