Out With The Old (Especially Condiments)

Posted on January 3, 2022 by Ann Lovejoy
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Under the snow, the winter greens still flourish

Making Room For Respair

For most folks, New Year’s is all about fresh starts, at least nominally. I recently heard a cute quip: “New Years Resolutions go in one year and out the other.” All too true, so I try to get the jump on things by spending the first few days of each year making clean starts. I often spend New Year’s Day washing curtains and cleaning the windows so they sparkle when (if) the sun comes out. This year, I’ve been washing not just the curtains but all the extra window coverings necessitated by the prolonged sub-freezing days and nights, and rejoicing in the renewed light that fills our little home once again.

As for those resolutions, personally I find it best to work up to large shifts of habit or consciousness by starting with something small and manageable. One favorite new year’s task is to investigate the contents of the post-holiday refrigerator. Since my family is still in quarantine, mealtime census has been low and I’ve been labeling everything with the date it was made or opened to avoid finding interesting molds in those mysterious back-of-the-fridge containers. I started the task with the freezer and found an astonishing number of bagged bits of bread. I always think a slightly stale loaf end could be useful as crumbs or in stuffing, but I only make stuffing once or twice a year, and there are only so many dishes improved by crumbs. Out they went to feed the hungry birds and squirrels, all very appreciative of the unexpected bounty.

My Geezer Freezer

When my kids were growing up, our freezer was famously known as The Freezer Of Death because a cascade of nameless, sketchily lodged packages rained down on the incautious. When I was a kid, our freezer held many packages labeled ‘needs work’, remnants of less than successful meals. Now I’ve got a geezer freezer, the kind fond grandparents develop when grandkids are frequent dinner guests. My initial excavation disclosed an astonishing variety of half-empty ice cream containers, as my grandkids adore mixing unusual kinds of ice cream into cold “soup.” Anything with frost crystals got the toss, including two boxes of dubious fruit bars left over from summer, which freed up lots of space for holiday leftovers (all labeled and dated, of course!).

Frozen Assets

Another motherlode involved many pounds of beautiful butter. I always buy nice butter when it’s on sale. Don’t you? Doesn’t everybody? Good butter certainly comes in handy when there are onions to caramelize and cookies to bake, right? I also buy lovely tea on sale, which is why I have several dozen boxes of (mostly) different kinds on my tea shelf. Surely that’s normal? There are also a number of half-used packets of pepperoni for pizza—those little bags get lost so easily! Any that smelled a bit off got binned and the rest were united, labeled and dated(!) and put in a better spot on the freezer door (plus we made sourdough pizza for dinner, yum!). After this massive clearing out, what’s left is obvious and easy to find, and only actual assets are left of the previous random jumble.

Next, I did the vegetable bins, which get cleaned out fairly regularly so are not too daunting. In fact, it’s a pleasure to see them full of crisp greens from my little pea patch, harvested under the snow. We’ve been enjoying them in stir fries and soups and today we found that we quite like finely shredded kale and chicory on pizza. After washing each shelf and replacing whatever made the cut, I took on The Door, home to innumerable condiments. It’s so easy to fall for a special zowie flavoring, perhaps something you enjoyed at a restaurant or friend’s house, and decide to stock up and make something similar at home. You do, and it’s good, but really not something you want to eat very often so the little bottle of whatever sauce goes in the fridge. Right? Admitting that the remainder was never going to be used helped empty out the main clutter, exposing many bottles of vinegars made last summer. I had intended to give them to friends for holiday gifts, but with covid19 cases exploding here, there haven’t been any fun little get-togethers. Still, vinegar keeps well, so the plum and nectarine vanilla and cardamom pear vinegars can wait until when it’s safe to gather again.

A New Old Word

As I cleaned, I found myself saying a new word over and over. A friend sent me a note about it, saying he’d read an article in the Guardian about this long-forgotten word that deserves great attention in these troubled times. Apparently coined in 1425 and seldom if ever used since, the work is “respair” and is defined as the renewal of hope after a time of despair. Indeed, it is the perfect word for our time, when renewal of hope is vital to our wellbeing, to our daily balance, to our very sanity. It’s a noun and a verb, so we can respair, as in discover new hope, and we can experience respair, as in the refreshed feelings that hope awakens in our spirits. May the New Year be one of respair for us all and for our precious planet!

Clean fridge, great pizza!

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Helping Hummingbirds (And People)
 Make It Through The Big Chill

Posted on December 27, 2021 by Ann Lovejoy
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Hummers are beautiful but feisty birds

Cold And Snowy Holidays

While we were expecting to have low key holidays, another unprecedented weather event made them almost nonexistent. I can’t remember such a string of below-freezing days, let alone nights in the teens, with icy North winds making them feel even colder. It feels especially dire when we recall June’s soaring heat dome event. Going from a high of 106 to a low of 15 degrees makes me worry for my plants, let alone the local wildlife. Where I grew up in Massachusetts, such differences were common, so homes were built to handle all kinds of weather. Here in the Maritime Pacific Northwest, older homes tend to lack insulation, making extreme temperatures uncomfortable and even unsafe. Local emergency warming stations are open day and night now and shelters have been packed as volunteers are scouting the streets to make sure homeless people aren’t left out in the cold.

Hospitals are also busier than usual as yet another covid19 wave is cresting. My home community has seen the fewest cases in the county but in recent weeks, we’ve been leading the pack, with fully vaccinated people of all ages getting breakthrough covid. ERs are also jammed, as I happen to know, having spent many hours in one last week. Lately I’ve been having episodes of chest pressure, a feeling of fullness even after many hours without eating, accompanied by a sense of impending doom. When the funky feeling occurred again, my daughter urged me to call 911 and I ended up in the ER. After a zillion tests to rule out heart issues, and every test came back normal, I refused to spend the night there and went home. During it all, I became deeply sure that I’ve been having anxiety attacks. The medics disagreed, insisting that there has to be a specific trigger for a panic attack. Since I’d been calmly cooking salmon this time, nobody was convinced by my self-diagnosis, but the more I named it out loud, the more I realized the truth of it.

Pressure Is Pain

I get why the medics ran me through all the hoops. Say “chest pressure” and they hear “chest pain” and respond like you’re having a heart attack, which might well be the case. Heart attacks in women can present in all sorts of ways, but rarely look like the male version (which is of course the classic example). However, as I’m learning, anxiety episodes also come in many forms and not all are textbook-obvious. When I really started looking at my recent behavior, I realized that I’ve been self-soothing obsessively, knitting every minute I could spare from doing crossword puzzles and re-reading favorite comfort books (sometimes getting through more than one a day, the dark side of being a fast reader).

Now that I’m paying attention, I notice that I really, really don’t like not knowing what’s coming and I really dislike not being in control. There have definitely been a lot of events falling into both categories in recent years. Hmm. Almost the minute I recognized that I was making myself crazy, something released and a remarkable feeling of peace and spacious freedom blossomed within me. It’s been a week and I’m still riding that high, despite the crazy cold weather and holiday cancellations galore. Today, the neighborhood kids are playing in the snow and their cheerful happiness is infectious in a GOOD way (right?).

Sledding down the street at 10 degrees

About Those Hummingbirds

Last year, my grandkids gave me a lovely glass hummingbird feeder, which was so popular that I got a few more plainer feeders to give more birds a chance at the nectar. During the summer, there are plenty of flowers and insects for the hummers and I don’t put up the feeders until the garden slows down. This year, a pineapple sage bloomed its heart out right up until the Big Chill arrived. Hummingbirds love those tubular red flowers and that and my many fuchsias kept the crowd happy, but overnight the world changed and now the birds are really hungry. To keep them well fed, I’m rotating feeders every few hours so the frozen ones thaw out before they get swapped out again. I start putting them out at dawn (which is well before sunup) and in minutes the little birds are buzzing in for breakfast.

Sadly, hummingbirds are very territorial and really do not share well. I keep moving the feeders farther apart to try to stop one big male from hogging the whole feast. My Russian neighbor also feeds them and the smarter birds zip back and forth from her porch to mine, with the big male in hot pursuit. It seems ridiculous for these busy little birds to waste so much precious energy fending off other hungry critters when there’s enough for everyone to be well fed. Apparently animal nature and human nature have a lot in common… By night, five or six hummers retire to a bushy screen of Mexican orange (Choisya ternata) that blends into a big evergreen clematis on my other neighbor’s trellised porch. It’s charming to hear them chirping away at dusk, when they tuck themselves into the evergreen foliage for the night. Apparently the territorial issues don’t arise over sleeping quarters as they do over food?

Feeder Filling

Once we start feeding birds, we have to keep it up, as they’ve come to depend on human help in winter. When filling feeders, always use the classic Audubon-approved recipe. Never use alternative forms of sweeteners, none of which are good for birds (and some of which are outright harmful). Never add red dye, which can be harmful; the feeder’s bright color is attraction enough. Always wash the feeders between fillings so they don’t get moldy, and let them dry before putting them back outside so nobody’s feet get frozen to the perches.

Classic Hummingbird Nectar

4 cups warm water
1 cup cane sugar

Mix well to dissolve sugar and fill feeders immediately. Refrigerate mix for up to three days or make a fresh batch each time you fill your feeders.

Posted in Birds In The Garden, Care & Feeding, Health & Wellbeing, Sustainable Gardening, Sustainable Living | Tagged , | 10 Comments

Renewing Winter Holidays

Posted on December 20, 2021 by Ann Lovejoy
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Bathing With Citrus For Luck And Pleasure

Celebrating Solstice

Happy New Year! Already? Yup; the Winter Solstice marks the Solar New Year and this change point has been celebrated around the world for millennia. Even in the tropics, the solstices are recognized as The Days Of No Shadows, since the sun is directly overhead at noon on the Equator on both days. Up in Alaska, my friend Les reports having strings of subzero days, with a full moon high of 16 F below and a biting wind to make it feel even colder. He says the challenge is to get out of bed and stay up, doing little chores and tending his winter garden. Every winter, Les spends the brief, dark days making colorful ice flowers and sculptures to illuminate with zillions of candles (the largest pieces take several dozen candles each but he has to use them because battery powered candles don’t hold a charge in subzero temperatures). He holds a Solstice ice garden tour that benefits the local library and gives people an enchanting, magical glimpse of light blooming in the darkest of days.

As I’ve grown increasingly uncomfortable with the commercial versions of winter holidays, Solstice celebrations have become ever more satisfying. For many years, we built a Solstice bonfire and invited neighbors to welcome winter and the return of the light. We would all throw written messages into the flames, naming things we wanted to be done with or things we hoped for, or both. My daughter often brought honey mead to make oaths or toasts with; one sip of the fiery stuff is plenty for me but getting hammered on Solstice mead is a tradition that dates back at least a few thousand years if not more. Personally, I’m drawn to the more meditative Solstice traditions, honoring the day with music, cooking festive food, doing creative handwork or making something artful.

Light In The Darkness

One favorite tradition involves plunging the entire household into darkness (it’s supposed to happen at midnight but I can’t stay awake that late anymore). People gather in a circle as the lights go out, and after a period of meditation and prayer, the youngest or oldest person present lights a candle. After offering a song or story or poem, they light someone else’s candle, then that person offers their song or whatever and lights the candle of the next person. As the flame passes around the circle, the room grows brighter and the mood gets merrier until everyone is singing and laughing. Then the feasting begins, and the libations and celebrations can go on all night-or all week. These days, we light our candles in the evening, then hold revels as long as anyone wants to keep it up, but rarely do they last more than a few hours.

The most difficult part is making the whole house dark. It’s surprising to see how many little lights stay on all night, from clock faces to the stovetop and many various gadgets. Rather than unplugging the stove and internet devices, etc., we drape towels over them and cover the little lights on internet devices, surge protectors and ground fault interruptors with a bit of painter’s tape, which comes off clean and doesn’t leave any sticky residue, as electrician’s tape can (ask me how I know). The homes in our little neighborhood are very close together and it’s impossible to block out all the light from outside, but we drape sheets over the window curtains to make things darker (and warmer) indoors. Whenever I do this, I remember being in wild places where there were no human-made lights for miles and becoming aware of the power of starlight, dim yet radiant.

Good Yule To You

Long before there was Christmas, the season of Yule was an important part of the year, especially for the Germanic and Scandinavian countries as well France, England, Scotland and Ireland. The Winter Solstice was a highlight of the Yule season, which could stretch for several months and often included bonfires, songs and storytelling, as well as feasting, drinking and carousing. For many cultures, the Winter Solstice was celebrated as the end of the harvesting period, a time for rest and recuperation. Christmas celebrations changed in Queen Victoria’s reign, shifting the focus towards decorated trees and gift giving.

These days, there’s a fascinating resurgence of interest in ancient Solstices practices, some fostered by Neopagans, notably Wiccans, who prefer to focus on nature-based spirituality. There’s also new interest in aboriginal and tribal spiritual traditions from all over the world, most of which are similar in considering all living things (and often all creation) to be as important, valuable and sacred as humans. This key concept appeals to me far more than patriarchal, man-centric religions that seem to have little room or respect for the feminine, whether physical or spiritual. Sometimes it feels a bit sad to find that once-comforting old traditions have lost their potency and power for me, yet I’m finding there is hope and wholeness in other even longer-standing spiritual traditions. Let there be Light!

Lucky Pumpkins

In Japan, many people eat Kabocha squash at the Solstice to ensure good luck in the coming year. The hardest part of preparing these pumpkin-like winter squashes is cutting them open. I’ve used everything from a small hand axe to a hacksaw but finally settled on my largest chef’s knife, newly sharpened. Once cut in half and seeded, you can microwave the squash halves until tender enough to cut easily (usually around 2-4 minutes). To bake the whole squash as pre-prep, wrap it in foil and bake at 400 degrees F for about 15-20 minutes. Now you can pop out the stem, cut the squash in half and scoop out the seeds (which can be roasted and salted just like pumpkin seeds). Now you can slice the squash for roasting or dice the pieces for soups. The roasted skin is edible but can be easily peeled off at this stage if you prefer.

Roasted Kabocha Squash With
Maple Syrup, Coconut & Ginger

I tasted a version of this at a local restaurant and made up this recipe to come close to the original. You can change the spices to your taste, make it sweeter or less sweet, or just roast the slices with a little oil, salt and pepper and call it good- it will be!

Solstice Lucky Pumpkin

3-4 pounds Kabocha squash, cut in half-inch slices
(see above for directions)
3-4 Tbsp avocado oil
2-3 Tbs maple syrup
2-3 Tbsp grated ginger root
1-2 tsp grated turmeric root
1/2 tsp kosher or sea salt
1/8-1/4 tsp hot smoked paprika
1/2 cup unsweetened coconut flakes

Place a sheet of parchment paper on a rimmed baking sheet and lightly brush with oil, set aside. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. In a bowl, blend the oil, maple syrup, ginger, turmeric, salt and paprika. Toss the squash slices in the mixture to coat evenly and place in a single layer on the baking sheet. Roast for 15-20 minutes on a side, turning once. About 7-8 minutes before the squash is done, sprinkle with coconut flakes and resume cooking. Serve hot or at room temperature. Serves at least one.

 

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Making Homey Holidays

Posted on December 13, 2021 by Ann Lovejoy
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Hundreds made and hundreds to go…

Beautiful Lights & Jolly Ginger Folk

Recently I introduced my grandkids to the magic of origami and now we’re all hooked. In amongst the boxes of holiday decorations was an old copy of an origami book with patterns for making holiday ornaments. It also has patterns for making lots of animals, notably chickens and ducks, which have been transformed by the advanced magic of childhood imagination into all kinds of beautiful birds. There are also now many fish, folded and painted and taped with tiny bags of treats from our kitty advent calendar. The kiddos made woven paper heart baskets for each of the family cats and filled them with origami cat toys.

The most poignant is one made for a dearly beloved black cat who never came back home one day. After a few months, the kids stopped talking about Monk but recently the five year old has become interested in death and decay. Since I turned 70 a few weeks ago, she asks me often about getting older, and what that feels like. She looks closely at the wrinkles on my hands and face and wonders if they hurt. She even asked me to record the slow rot of our pumpkins in pictures so she can observe the changes. Right now she’s writing a series of letters to Monk which she’s putting in a heart basket to hang outside their backdoor, in case he comes back for the holidays.

Love Is Never Wasted

Writing love letters to our lost ones can be a healing process, even though-or maybe because-they aren’t deliverable in any sense we know about. My granddaughter’s letters reminded me of a very young friend who asked his parents to help him write one to my husband, who had recently died. Little Owen was fascinated by Bud, especially intrigued by Bud’s big hands as he played his tall stand-up bass. In his letter, Owen said he missed Bud and hoped he was feeling better now. Then he asked his dad to put it on the roof so Bud could see it as he flew by, singing with the angels (which of course made every adult in range tear up). Similarly, my granddaughter wants Monk to know he is still loved and I think part of her is hoping that maybe he’s still alive somewhere and wanting to come home.

We decided that love can cross any distance of time and place and no matter where Monk is, his spirit will receive the loving spirit of her words. A friend once told me in a time of deep distress that love is never wasted, whether it feels received or reciprocated or not. Then I wasn’t so convinced, but these days, I think it’s true. It also feels true that home is where you feel it. Thinking about what makes a place home, I was trying to count all the places I’ve lived and lost track after 20-some. Same for cats, who have always been important family members for me, from Sneakers, the big old tom I dressed in doll clothes as a toddler to my beautiful, wise and kind Sophie, who sleeps on my feet at night. Twenty cats? Oh, many more than that, all dearly loved companions.

Finding Home

My childhood home was sold long ago and my family is scattered across the country. and rarely communicates. Even so, I’ve never felt so at home as I do now, snug in this charming vintage mobile home with my daughter and our cats and a craft room and 18 tall bookshelves crammed with our top favorites. We both feel happily at home in our little community of 50 homes; it’s a true neighborhood and it’s heartening to see my neighbors daily, whether stopping for a chat or offering a friendly wave as we collect our mail from the community mailboxes. The neighborhood has a tradition of illuminating porches and windows with holiday lights and we’ve jumped right in, stringing garlands of colorful lights inside and out. The origami I’m most obsessed with right now is a simple balloon shape, one of the easiest patterns to learn. Basically you fold and tuck a little box, then blow into it to inflate the balloon, which can be slipped over an LED bulb (they don’t get hot).

My goal was to have 100 paper balloons to stick on strings of 50 lights for holiday gifts, but discovered that due to those global supply chain issues, all holiday lights have been in short supply this year, especially LED lights. After chasing all over town, I finally found a few strings of LED lights, only to realize that the bulbs were too small for the paper balloons. I tried folding tinier balloons but they’re trickier to fold and the holes are so small that they are seriously hard to inflate. Fortunately I found a few strings of plain white LED lights with the right-sized bulbs, but each string has 100 bulbs. Alrighty then, back to the folding table!

Playful Gingerbread Cookies

One thing that makes me feel like I’m at home for the holidays is making gingerbread folks with kids. These are tasty enough for adults to enjoy eating and fun to make for anyone of any age. The dough is very forgiving and never gets tough no matter how much it’s handled. It can be molded like play-doh or rolled and cut out with cookie cutters, and of course the decoration possibilities are endless. My original recipe used soft butter, but since my granddaughter is dairy sensitive, I swapped for avocado oil, which has a subtly buttery flavor.

Favorite Ginger Folks

1-3/4 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1-3/4 cups unbleached white flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon each ground ginger, cinnamon and coriander
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 cup avocado or any cooking oil
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup unsulphured molasses

Preheat oven to 350 degree F. Sift dry ingredients together, set aside. In a large mixing bowl, combine oil, brown sugar and molasses with 1/4 cup boiling water. Add flour in 3 parts, adding a little more water 1 teaspoon at a time as needed to make a firm dough. Roll into a ball and lightly oil a rimmed baking sheet. Divide dough into 10-12 pieces, then use each piece to shape a ginger-person or snow-person. Bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes; when done, cookies will feel slightly springy to the touch. Cool on a rack before frosting. Makes 10-12 ginger folks.

 

 

 

Posted in Care & Feeding, Crafting With Children, Health & Wellbeing, Nutrition, Recipes, Sustainable Living, Vegan Recipes | Tagged , | 2 Comments