Not By Bread Alone

Now that the cooler weather is here, I've been putting my bread maker to use again. The encroaching darkness warns us of the coming winter and the soul cries out for comfort food. What can be more comforting than a piping hot soup or stew with bread fresh from the oven - or bread machine. I found myself pretty limited by the manual that came with the machine, and so I reached for a book that Joe's aunt had given me years ago. I had never attempted any of the recipes except one that I mixed by hand, and to tell you the truth, I wasn't impressed. But, I was feeling a little more than adventurous and decided to take another look.

As I thumbed through the pages I came across this sentence under the heading Pain au Levain ..."This simple bread is as basic as life and breath." Hmm, I thought this could be promising. More tantalizing words jumped off the page...divine, mouth-watering, chewy, crisp crust. But it was these words that made me stop and really take notice:

"Don't blame us if after you've made this bread 5 or 6 times the people who eat at your table burst into tears. Beauty does that to some of us. We can't help it."

I stopped. Here was a sentiment close to my heart. For food is love, is it not? I looked over the recipe, but found that it required at least 5 hours of time - too short for dinner, but tomorrow...

Instead I found a recipe for NO Pain Ordinaire that could be done that afternoon. The authors described it as "instant satisfaction from your bread machine." The result was a delicious crusty bread, aromatic, and chewy on the inside. All the guys said "Yum" and the loaf was gone. I am printing it below for your edification.

For one 1-1/2 pound loaf

1-1/8 c. water
1-1/2 tbs. soft butter
1 tsp. salt
1-1/2 tbs. sugar
3 c. bread flour
2 tsp. bread machine yeast

Combine ingredients in bread machine in order given.
Process on the basic bread setting.

-from

Rustic European Breads from Your Bread Machine

If you don't have bread flour, you can make your own using 1 tbs. vital wheat gluten to 1 c. all purpose flour. I use regular yeast with no problem. More on bread tomorrow. Enjoy.

Autumn

"There is no need to bewail the declining year.
Autumn is a glorious season in its own right,
and as pleasant as summer to spend in the garden."

- Christopher Lloyd

Today was indeed glorious. Despite the thickening clouds, the air was pleasantly warm. So I let the younger boys off for the afternoon, and headed out to the garden with baskets in hand to gather herbs and vegetables.

The string beans in the upper garden have all but finished producing and have become forage for the deer. In the kitchen garden, however, the bean plants are just beginning to fruit. The beans themselves are long and "sticky" with tiny little hairs, and sport an attractive purplish mosaic pattern on its skin.

I'm still gathering very small tomatoes from the blighted plants. These are more sun than vine ripened since most of the fruit has already fallen from the plants. The tomatoes I had found near the compost pile, however, have appeared to escaped the blight perhaps due to the fact that they were covered by weeds during the early growing season. Large green tomatoes still cling to the vines, and I can only hope that with a careful covering of floating row cover we may soon enjoy them.

I next cut parsley, basil, and applemint for drying. These herbs, I've discovered, dry very quickly if placed in a wire mesh colander and set in the oven for a day or two. Frequent stirring keeps the herbs crisp and helps maintain their color better.

One of my favorite activities of September is making wild grape jelly. This year I found several places on the homestead where the wild grapes formed thick canopies over small weed trees. I was able to fill my garden basket about 2/3 full, but will need to find more if I want to make jelly. Our St. Pepin grapes produced several nice bunches of sweet-tart grapes, and I added these to the basket "for complexity" of flavor. Yes, that is a picture of one "goodly bunche" at the top of this post.

The red onions faired poorly. Too little sun I think. Most of the bulbs I pulled were almost as small as when I first planted them. I will dry them and replant them next spring.

I also began seed gathering for next season. We had a very successful trial with saving a French lettuce seed from last year. It was my most vigorously growing lettuce, and just about every seed germinated. I gathered these seed heads again, and some of the buttercrunch. Both the Italian and curly parsley have finally entered the seed setting stage and I gathered several dry heads already. There are literally thousands of these seeds so I think I will be set for parsley for many years to come. I will continue to gather some dill seed for next year's pickling spice, but the remainder I will allow to self sow over the garden again this year. I found that those "wild" dill seeds that had overwintered resulted in stronger healthier plants. (These were wild only because I had dropped the bowl holding hundreds of seeds last Fall among the raspberries.)

The beets continue to be abundant, and I pulled a large basket full of the round and cylindrical veggies to can. But first, fresh beet greens for dinner. Yum.

"After Apple Picking"

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.

And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

- Robert Frost

A Blight Upon Your Plants!

The boys and I stood dejectedly in the garden. Before us lay the sixty-plus tomato plants that I had grown from seed and carefully nurtured as seedlings. They showed such promise in early June when we planted them out. Tall and green they stood, and their only enemies seemed to be the curious geese that nibbled their leaves.

Then came the blight - the all conquering blight. First the bottom few leaves turned spotted and yellow. These we pulled off, and covered the bare ground around the tomatoes with clean straw to prevent backsplash of the fungus from the dirt below. More and more leaves succumbed to this "spotted fever", and soon the small green tomatoes showed signs of scab. The plants no longer stood, but lay exhausted, their fruits attempting to ripen in the few hot days of August.

The newspaper headlines screamed of early blight disease that traveled from the south - Alabama to be exact - taking revenge on Northern New England tomatoes and potatoes. Fugicides flew off the store shelves. Garden bloggers gave advice on organic remedies sure to help. And still the plants died. No kitchen garden or farm was left untouched by this grim reaper that sent hundreds of thousands of plants to their funeral pyres. Disconsolate canners sigh and their canning kettles lie unused - jars and larders empty. "Oh, for the taste of one vine ripened tomato" is the cry heard from hundreds of lips - the sweet flavor but a distant memory as we force ourselves to by bland tomatoes in the produce section of the local grocery. In this war the South has truly won.

Keeping Busy

It has been almost three weeks since I last sat down to write. Baseball tournaments, frantic afternoons of home schooling paperwork, book ordering, jam making, and "last minute" visits and BBQ's before the new school year blended into what seemed to be one week. Now the girls are both gone to school, and there is a palpable hole in the family.

The boys and I have kept ourselves very busy the last two days so as not to dwell on the girls' departure. Yesterday, I cleaned up the last few things in the girls' room and vacuumed thoroughly, then cleaned out the bathroom of girlish miscellany that was left out and about, making space under the sink for "manly" soap and t.p. A space was made in the medicine cabinet for future shaving needs. All of this greatly pleased the boys who promised vociferously to keep "their" bathroom neat and clean.

I weeded out the lettuce, picked raspberries, cut dill heads for seed, and cut gladiolas. Later the boys helped me pick yellow beans - this time there was enough for supper - and some sad looking tomatoes that were attempting to ripen on blighted vines. (More on the blight in another post.) We feasted on Quiche Lorraine, wax beans, and ice cream/sherbet for dessert.

Today was another beautiful day - autumn-like in flavor and a delight in which to garden. I managed to weed out the asparagus seedlings and the area between the parsley and fence. The garden is beginning to look like a garden again which pleases me very much. I picked more peppermint to dry for tea and flavoring, and then dug up the rogue fingerling potatoes that had wintered over in the blackberry patch. I also trimmed the garlic and cleaned it for storage. William helped me chop up some areas of new poison ivy, Joey put together a soccer net, and Edmund single handedly dragged down small tree limbs that Papa had cut up top. (Of this feat, Edmund was exceptionally proud, and he gave me a full account of how he used a rope to drag down the branches, and how the biggest one took the greatest effort to move the last ten feet.)

Supper consisted of beef stew made with the newly dug potatoes and freshly picked green beans. White flour biscuits - a special request from William - delighted the boys who have difficulty accepting whole wheat flour in their breads.

I think everyone is looking forward to a good night's rest.

Hidden Treasure

I went up to the garden this afternoon to see if there were any beans for supper. No beans. Only flowers. But that is something. The squash plants are still alive - the moats around them have dried somewhat in the sun. There are thundershowers predicted for tomorrow; I can only hope that the rain will be light.

As I was leaving the garden I noticed some very lush tomato plants growing amid even lusher weeds. The seeds must have wintered over in the compost pile Joe made, and in the rich, porous soil they have grown undisturbed and quite happily. I decided to weed around them and as I pulled out handfuls of wild grass, jewel weed, and dandelion, I happened upon a small cucumber. After further investigation I realized that I had found the cucumbers that Joe had planted in early June. They had been forgotten in the rain, mud, and growing weeds. With a grateful heart for small treasures, I picked two spiny fruits and brought them back to the house.

I also picked the first of our cherry tomatoes today - a small orange variety. They were exceptionally sweet. God is good. All the time.

Goosey, Goosey, But No Gander

Yesterday Edmund came hurrying into the house carrying one of the geese in his arms. He began a convoluted story of how he was going to gather the eggs, when he was waylaid by our tyrannical rooster, Angus. As he turned to run he noticed that something was amiss with one of the geese. She had somehow gotten her leg entangled in some fishing line, and the line was threatening to cut off the circulation to her foot. A chase ensued around the pond - Edmund running after the goose, and Angus after Edmund. Providentially, the dragging fishing line snagged on a stick bringing the fleeing creature to a halt, thus enabling Edmund to tackle her.

Unfortunately, Mummy was sick and in bed. So, into the bedroom Edmund brought the goose. As I inspected her leg, Joey ran to get a scissors. I struggled to cut the line free with shaking feverish hands. Out of one eye I watched the goose's bill come closer and closer to my ear. She was making sniffing sounds. Very ominous. (Edmund later sniffed me and said I smelled good and that was why she was so interested). I think she wanted to bite me. I was finally able to slip the tip of an embroidery scissors between the fishing line and her skin, and with one snip, she was free. She seemed to know the worst was over and began beating her wings and kicking her large, muddy, webbed feet all over the white coverlet.

Later, Edmund and William climbed into bed next to me with a pile of Beatrix Potter books. We spent a good part of the afternoon naming our ducks and geese after characters from her books. The rescued goose is "Ginger"; the other two "Cecily" and "Parsley" as one can't tell them apart. Three of the ducks now have names: Mr. Drake Puddleduck, Jemima Puddleduck, and Rebeccah Puddleduck. We're still deciding on the other two.

After several attempted catnaps in which one of the cats wakened me each time (is life ironic or what?), Joey came in to the bedroom for help with an essay. We worked and discussed great things, and got a good second draft going.

That evening, feeling better, I helped Mary make cherry jam. I can't tell you what a joy it was to teach her this skill. Perhaps one day she'll make jam for her own family.

All in all, these unexpected and precious moments with my children made up for the fact that I was unwell. It was a very good day.