All posts by Laurie Graves

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

Waffle Sunday and a Sweet Story

February 1, 2016 Laurie Graves 20 Comments

Yesterday, our friends Dawna and Jim and Beth and John came over for brunch, one of our favorite meals to host. Neither Clif nor I are morning people, so inviting people over for an early breakfast is not, ahem, our thing. But brunch can be started late morning, even noon, if you feel like it, and we love all the brunchy food—pancakes, waffles, home fries, egg dishes. We just don’t want to prepare them first thing.

Clif and I are not what you would call organized (unfortunately!) but when it comes to brunch, we have things under control. I started a day or two ahead by making a blueberry sauce and a chunky apple sauce. By Sunday, the potatoes for the home fries were cooked and cooled in a bowl in the refrigerator. (I’ve learned that cool potatoes make the best home fries.)

The day of the brunch, I put together the chili eggs, a baked dish with plenty of cheese and, of course, green chilis. I am also Captain Home Fries, and for this brunch I had three frying pans going—five pounds of potatoes—while the chili eggs baked. Truly, I felt like a maestro as I presided over the sizzling home fries.

Clif whipped up his delectable waffles, and we gathered around the dining room table as he made fresh hot waffles, one at time. He passed the plate around, and sections were taken. At first the dish came back empty, but as Clif continued making waffles, we could no longer keep up with waffle consumption, and the pile grew.

The cherry on the sundae was Beth’s blueberry cake, so moist, so light, so good. After a meal like that, stretching on for hours, Clif and I didn’t eat much of anything else for the rest of the day.

The talk around the table ranged from politics—the Iowa primaries are coming right up—to books, to movies, and, of course, to food. I mentioned that with Shannon and Mike moving to the South, one of the things I really missed were the simple celebrations—birthdays, anniversaries, Mother’s Day—that we shared. I told of the fish tacos we made for Shannon’s birthday last year and of the chocolate cupcakes with peppermint whipped cream that Shannon always made me for Mother’s Day.

Dawna said, “I know what you mean. We do the same thing in our family, but somehow Jim’s birthday is always the favorite with our granddaughters. They love to come over and help me make cupcakes for him and then frost them.”

Such a sweet story in so many ways—the love the granddaughters feel for their grandfather, the helping with the cupcakes, and the pleasure they take in celebrating Jim’s birthday. The granddaughters are young, and it says a lot that Jim’s birthday, rather than their own birthdays, is the favourite celebration.

I have no doubt that when those girls grow up, they will continue the tradition of food and merriment in celebration of birthdays and other special events.

Nature

Leaves and Needles, Snow and Ice

January 30, 2016 Laurie Graves 14 Comments

For me, the rural life in Maine is never boring. From season to season, there is such variability—cold, snow, rain, flowers, green grass, leaves, blazing colors, austere brown, and then back to snow. Even within the same season, from day to day, there is change.

In the winter snow falls and then it melts. Leaves and spills are scattered everywhere, only to be covered up again by snow. The ice on the brook advances and recedes. Always something new to look at and admire. Always something to photograph.

Here are some pictures from a recent walk in the woods.

Art, Food

Water, Water Everywhere: Jeffrey Becton at Bates and a Trip to Fuel Afterwards

January 28, 2016 Laurie Graves 18 Comments

Yesterday, Clif and I went to to the Museum of Art at Bates College. Of the three colleges, Colby, Bates, and Bowdoin—all of which have fine art museums—Bates’s is the smallest. Nevertheless, as The View Out His Window (and in his mind’s eye): Photographs by Jeffery Becton illustrates, small doesn’t mean second rate. Far from it. (If time allows, do clink on the link to take a look at some of the work in this terrific exhibit.)

The moment I walked into the gallery and saw the photographs, I got that particular feeling—a sort of current—that comes from seeing very good art. Becton’s photographs are large, and they feature surreal montages of old houses, old doors, peeling paint, still lifes, and decay. Water figures prominently in all the photographs as it comes into a room or laps at the edges or is just plain there. The palate is muted, almost soothing, yet there is also a certain sadness in most of the photos. If Andrew Wyeth had had a more vivid imagination, this is how he might have painted.

From one of the wall signs, I learned that “[t]o create the works…[Becton] photographed, painted, layered, fused and altered digital imagery from myriad sources and constructed the pictures…”

The woman at the desk told me that she’d like to step into one of the photographs. My response: “Only if there was a quick way out.” All that water coming into the rooms has a, well, unsettling effect.

Indeed, on the wall, is a quotation by Jeffrey Becton: “We love, need, and fear water and for good reason. I try to tease out the resonances and amplify them because life is difficult and unfair and the passing of time is mysterious.”

The exhibit runs until March 26, and Clif and I plan to go back for a second look. Bates College is only thirty minutes or so from where we live, and for us it is an easy trip. Readers, if you like art and live within driving distance, then I urge you to go see this exhibit. Admission is free, and on Monday and Wednesday the museum is open until 7:30.

After the exhibit, we went to one of our favorite restaurants, Fuel, which specializes in simple French cooking, “country French food with no attitude.” The food and flavors at Fuel have a subtlety missing from most restaurants in Maine, even the good ones. Fuel also makes delicious cocktails, which I cannot resist.

The restaurant has a comfortable bar, and we chose to sit there and order from the bar menu. (We have a gift certificate, and we decided it would go further at the bar.)

First I started with a cocktail, a cosmopolitan. As Clif was driving, he had a beer.

I had lobster pasta and cheese, a lovely blend of cheeses and lobster—I found three whole claws in my dish.

As we never eat beef at home, Clif ordered a burger and fries, a treat for him because he has it so infrequently.

Was there room for dessert? You bet there was. We ordered profiteroles—a fancy word for cream puffs—filled with vanilla ice cream and drizzled with chocolate sauce.

A sweet ending to a fine day.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday: Looking Up, Looking Down

January 27, 2016 Laurie Graves 6 Comments

Food

To the Farmers’ Market for Potatoes, Carrots, and Mocha Chaga

January 25, 2016 Laurie Graves 12 Comments

Last weekend, Maine escaped the wild storm that hit much of the Eastern Seaboard. The storm dropped freezing rain on North Carolina, where Shannon and Mike now live, and headed north to dump over a foot of snow in places such as New York City, where Dee lives. Then it went out to sea, leaving us unscathed.

Therefore, on Saturday, we went to Longfellow’s Greenhouses for the winter farmers’ market they host from January 9 to February 27, from 9:00 a.m. to 1 p.m. It is held in their “mall”, a long strip, covered like a green house, that connects the retail store to the actual greenhouses.

Our own Farmer Kev was there, and we stocked up on potatoes and carrots, two essential winter vegetables. (In the fall, I had already stocked up on his winter squash.)

We chatted with Farmer Kev for a bit, and we learned he has his very own farm now in West Gardiner. Quite an accomplishment for a young man who isn’t even thirty and who doesn’t come from a farming family, from whom he will inherit land.

When we were done talking to Farmer Kev, we wandered up and down the mall, looking at the various products. So many good things to sample and see, but we were especially taken with Zen Bear, which sells honey and honey tea. We talked with Frank Ferrel, formerly of Maine Public Broadcasting fame and currently one of the owners of Zen Bear. (He and his wife Lisa run the business.) He told us that the honey comes from Amish farmers in Aroostook County in Maine.

IMG_0570-1 — Frank Ferrel ready to make some honey tea

We sampled some of the teas—“a gently infused herb, spice, honey and tea mixture…” All were delicious, but the one I liked the best was the Mocha Chaga, made from cacao, honey, Maine sea salt, chaga, and lucuma. According to Zen Bear’s website, chaga “is a medicinal mushroom that grows on decaying birch trees.” According to Wikipedia, lucuma “is a subtropical fruit native to the Andean valleys of Chile, Ecuador, and Peru.”

Quite the exotic drink for central Maine in January, but the cherry on the sundae, so to speak, was when Ferrel told us about how chaga was extremely high in antioxidants. (He had some tested at the University of Maine.)

All right, so Mocha Chaga is exotic—for a Mainer—and high in antioxidants. But how does it taste? I am happy to report that it has the delicious taste of hot cocoa, albeit one that has unusual ingredients and is high in antioxidants. I bought a jar of Mocha Chaga and had a cup this morning for elevenses. It was very good indeed.

Potatoes and carrots, honey tea made from chaga and lucuma. You never know what you’ll find at a farmers’ market.

Animals - especially dogs, Nature

Almost the Wolf Moon

January 23, 2016 Laurie Graves 18 Comments

Yesterday, Clif, Liam, and I went for a walk in the woods behind the high school. It was late afternoon, almost dusk. The setting sun sent slanting rays through the woods, but the shadows were deep enough to give everything a blue cast.

The little stream runs so fast that it only has a skim of ice. I like the heart-shaped cap of snow on the rock, and I might use this photo for a Valentine’s card.

The stones in the wall also have caps of snow, albeit none that look like hearts.

The brook is slower moving than the stream, and while it isn’t completely frozen, it has enough ice on it to muffle the sound of the moving water. Will it get cold enough this winter so that the brook freezes entirely?

When the wind blows through the woods, leaves and branches fall, making natural arrangements.

The trail twists through the woods until we come to another section of the stone wall. I was taken by this striated rock with snow.

When we came out of the woods, there was the almost-full moon—the Wolf Moon—rising by the school.

On Sunday, the moon will be full. If the night is clear and the night isn’t too cold, Clif, Liam, and I might take a walk in the woods and honor the moon.

Books, Movies, People

Movie Night: Black Narcissus (Based on the Novel by Rumer Godden)

January 22, 2016 Laurie Graves 13 Comments

About a year ago, Clif and I decided we would host a movie night at the little house in the big woods. We have three friends—Diane, Joel, and Alice—who love movies as much as we do, and Clif and I thought it would be fun to get together to watch a movie and then discuss it afterwards.

Over the course of the year we have fine-tuned the event. We start at about 5:30, we provide pizza and soft drinks, and our guests bring salad and dessert. Clif has a very good hand with pizza dough—he knows just how to stretch it—and we are able to buy a good frozen dough from a Maine company, Portland Pie Co. (The dough is available in our local supermarket.) I make a quick sauce using Muir Glen’s crushed tomatoes with basil, garlic, and a little dried oregano. Clif likes to use a mixture of cheeses—mozzarella, cheddar, and Monetary Jack.

We have two large pizza pans, one of which is cast iron, a present from my brother and his wife. And miracle of miracles, our blast-furnace oven does a great job with pizza. We bake the two pizzas for twenty minutes or so and voilà! Pizza for five or six, at a fraction of the cost of take-out.

We take turns choosing the movie, and last night was Joel’s turn. From his own film collection, Joel brought several to pick from, and we quickly settled on Black Narcissus, a 1947 film, staring Deborah Kerr and Jean Simmons and based on the book by the late great English writer, Rumer Godden.

Black Narcissus is the story of a small group of Anglican nuns, led by Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr), who travel to a remote former palace in the Himalayas to open a convent. At the new convent, the nuns plan to teach the local girls, open a health clinic, and grow much of their own food. But high on the mountain, the air is thin and the wind always blows. The local British agent, the charismatic Mr. Dean, warns them not to stay, feeling that the mountain will be too much for them.

Naturally the nuns stay, and naturally Mr. Dean is right. It isn’t long before the mountain and the people who live there exert an unhinging force on the various nuns, in particular Sister Ruth, played with an over-the-top relish by Kathleen Byron. A chaste love triangle forms between Sister Clodagh, Mr. Dean, and Sister Ruth, resulting in tragedy.

First, the good. Black Narcissus is extremely strong on the visuals—on the cinematography and on the sets where most of the movie was filmed. The colors, the framing, the vividness of place—even though it was mostly a set—is nothing short of astonishing. The cinematographer, Jack Cardiff, won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography, and he certainly deserved it. Visually, the movie is a work of art.

Unfortunately, the move was weak with character development, relying too much on bug-eyed melodrama and crashing music. Apparently, this sort of melodrama was big in England in 1947, but it marred the story written by an author who excelled at character development.

Nevertheless, Black Narcissus is a movie worth seeing, if only for the beauty of the filming. Diane was right in suggesting this was really a group film, best seen with others so that we could all react to the various over-the-top scenes.

Next month is Alice’s turn to pick, and we will be heading back to India with Monsoon Wedding. I’m looking forward to it.

Books

Book Group: The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry

January 21, 2016 Laurie Graves 14 Comments

Last night, I went to book group, which is hosted by our town’s library and run by the inimitable Shane Billings, the Adult Services Librarian. He started the book group over five years ago, and I’ve been with it since the beginning, with a few breaks here and there.

This month’s book was The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin. Here are the basics of the story: A young but cranky man, A. J. Fikry, runs a bookstore on Alice, a fictitious island off the coast of Massachusetts. When the story opens, A. J.’s wife has recently died in a car accident, and the grieving A. J. plans to drink himself to death. His suicidal plans are interrupted by Maya, an abandoned two year old who is left in his bookstore. A.J.’s love for Maya—and hers for him—gives his life meaning. (And, yes, there is more than a little similarity between this story and Silas Marner.) From there the story sweeps out to include Lambiase, a kindly police officer; A.j.’s dodgy sister-in-law, Ismay—how can she help being dodgy with a name like that?; and Amy, a dedicated bookseller from the mainland. There isn’t much of a plot—more a sweep of years, handled beautifully—spiced with the theft of a rare manuscript and another car crash that might or might not be murder. Finally, and perhaps best of all, there is the love of books that thrums through the story and connects the characters.

As was noted at book group, this is a sentimental story, but it is redeemed, to a large extent, by Zevin’s fine writing. In short, it is a sentimental tale told well.

There was a lively discussion about Ismay, the dodgy sister-in-law. Most of the members of the book group—composed mainly of older women—felt sympathy for Ismay, but the one young man who comes loathed her character. He didn’t see that Ismay had any redeeming qualities. Certainly, this point of view, while a little harsh, could be defended, and indeed in the book, young Maya doesn’t much like Ismay either.

One of the great things about our book group—Title Waves, it’s called—is that by and large, for over an hour, we discuss the book and nothing else. There is little chit-chat about personal matters, and we take the books and the discussions very seriously. After all, we are people who love books. At the same time, we are able to laugh and joke about our disagreements. There are some, like me, who have been there since the beginning, and there are many newcomers, too. All are welcome.

As Mona, one of the members, put it, “We all feel safe to express our opinions. It’s all right to disagree, and we do it respectfully.”

Yes, we do, and it is this attitude, along with the books, that has kept me coming to book group for over five years.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday: Frosty Heart

Image January 20, 2016 Laurie Graves

Books, People

Apple Crisp and Stories

January 19, 2016 Laurie Graves 16 Comments

On Sunday, our friends Cheryl and Denny and Judy and Paul came over for homemade apple crisp and talk. As I’ve noted in a previous post, I really love hosting afternoon get-togethers with friends. We have a good-size dining room with an old Victorian table—the original chairs, long gone, were filled with straw—that can easily be expanded to accommodate eight to ten people. However, for me, six is the perfect number for good conversation.

Apple crisp must surely be one of the best desserts to serve at a gathering. It can be made ahead of time, tucked in the refrigerator, and baked forty-five minutes or so before guests arrive. Old apples, a little wrinkled, taste perfectly good, and my blast-furnace oven does a fine bubbling job of baking the crisp. The recipe I use comes from a Craig Claiborne New York Times Cookbook, and I just follow his instructions. If I had made enough modifications to call the recipe mine, then I would happily share it. But I haven’t.

Then there is the smell of apples, cinnamon, and cloves as they blend and bake. It wafts from the kitchen and drifts to the dining room, and I expect this smell stimulates the appetite. (Let’s just say that it’s a good thing I made plenty for seconds.) So you have warm spiced apples and a crunchy, buttery topping. Perfect, right? Almost. It needs a scoop of vanilla ice cream to slowly melt into the warm mixture. Whipped cream is all right, but to my way of thinking, ice cream is the jewel in the crown, so to speak.

As we sat around the dining room table, we talked about many things, but one topic in particular stuck with me because I’ve been thinking about it lately—the importance of stories and how we all have them.

Judy told of how one day, when her mother was young—this would have been in the 1930s—she came home to find her mother (Judy’s grandmother) sobbing as she did the ironing.

“What’s wrong, what’s wrong?” Judy’s mother asked.

As Judy’s grandmother ironed, she listened to the radio, to an afternoon soap opera, and something sad had happened to one of the characters. Hence the tears.

After hearing this story, I replied, “I think the story gene runs strong in humans. Whatever the medium, we will always have stories. I’m sure of it.”

Everyone nodded, and Cheryl recounted how one Christmas her book group listened to a recording of A Child’s Christmas in Wales read by the great man himself, Dylan Thomas. All the lights were turned off except for the ones on the Christmas tree, and by the sparkling lights they listened to this fine writer read his own words.

“Sounds wonderful,” I said, thinking that I might like to do this next year, but with just Clif and me. (My book group meets at the library, and somehow, it just wouldn’t be the same to do it there.)

“It was,” Cheryl said, smiling as she remembered.

Warm apple crisp, friends around the table, shared stories. Another finest kind of way to spend a winter’s afternoon.

Notes From the Hinterland