Fleur-de-LawnCowgirl

They say 60 is the new 30. I can’t say I feel that in my bones, but I know I sure got smart when I turned 60.

Take the other day. An absolutely beautiful fall day. Crisp blue sky. Sun glittering through leaves of clear yellow, gold, bronze, orange, and deep crimson. Oh, the leaves. Our giant oak trees dumping bushels and bushels of leaves on the lawn. The John Deere lawn tractor roaring, blurring out the marching rhythms of the Blue Band practice that travel across the valley.

Our two-house, dead-end road is called Timber Lane. It connects to Oak Ridge Avenue.

Oak leaves, piles of them. So that is why it is called Oak Ridge Avenue—it is a ridge of oaks where an avenue and development moved in. It only took about 55 years for me to figure that out.

So here I am, on a perfect autumn day, mowing the lawn and worrying about mulching my garlic for the winter. I don’t have any straw. The hay in the barn has too many weed seeds. And then I remember a woman with a question a few weeks ago at a garlic-planting workshop. “What if you don’t have straw for mulch? Can you use leaves?”

“Sure,” I answered, “as long as they’re chopped up.”

The conversation comes back to me as I circle the yard, the lawn tractor shooting oak leaves into the center. Why not use these oak leaves, chopped by the mower, to mulch my garlic? Heck, my garlic patch is just on the other side of the split rail fence. I can take the rails down and just wheel the barrow filled with chopped leaves and sprinkle them on my rows of garlic.

15 leaf piles

I became a lawn cowgirl with a mission, lassoing those leaves. “Head ‘em up, Move ‘em on.” The theme song of my childhood TV favorite, Rawhide, comes blasting out of my mouth. Round and round I go. Visions of barrel racers crowd my head. They rein their muscular Quarter Horses around the barrels, leaning in, teasing gravity.

This is the same lawn my sisters and I traversed with our ponies playing Cowboys and Indians. I was always a squaw, picking berries. My sister Lisa was a brave, because she was bold enough to forego a shirt and paint her chest as she galloped on her white Welsh pony. Lee Ann must have been the cowgirl. There’s a story of her riding Firecracker in a Pet Pony class at a horse show. The wind was blowing and her cowboy hat would start to fly off her head, so she’d reach up to hold it on—with reins still in her hands. Each time she reached for her hat, she would pull Firecracker’s reins, making him stop. So Lee Ann would kick her little heels to make him start again. Stop start stop start stop start.

Back to the now. The dry leaves rustle as I plow through them. Rustling leaves, rustling cattle—same word, totally different meanings. I wonder why? So I rake my windrow into piles, and using the toothed fan of the rake and my left arm, I bear hug the leaves and dump them into the wheelbarrow. To the garlic patch I go, spreading the leaves on each row of garlic, tucking my cloves in for a long winter’s nap. Laurie Lynch

Rustling Up a Recipe: After all of this cowgirl stuff I worked up quite an appetite. I was hungry for baked apples and remembered a recipe in the Marcon Family Cookbook, created for a family reunion in 1990. I found the page I was looking for, Xeroxed in the handwriting of my first niece.

BAKED STUFFED APLES

COre APPles

STUFF WITH APRICOTS OR RAISINS AND BROWN SUGAR. POUR APPlE JUICE OVER Them. COVER WITH Plastic Wrap. BaKE in MicROwave for ten minutes or done.

I’ve tried to re-create the mixture of capital and lower case letters to indicate the trials and tribulations of a child navigating early printing—not criticizing her penmanship. It’s a charming snapshot of 6-year-old Alicia. She now holds a Master’s degree in Social Work and not long ago, turned the REAL 30. In months she’ll be a mother, and in no time, teaching her own child how to print…and bake apples.

Meanwhile, we baked apples a la Alicia, with Aunt Laurie’s few changes of convenience. No apricots or raisins, so I substituted dried cranberries. Brown sugar was rock hard, so I doused the apples with Alicia’s dad’s home-tapped maple syrup. And, since I was baking spaghetti squash for dinner, I baked the apples, covered with foil, in a traditional oven, 375 degrees for about 40 minutes.

Written on Slate: “Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower”—Albert Camus

Fleur-de-Vows&Wows

Sometimes I have a recipe that I just can’t wait to share, and that launches a blog post. That is the case today. I found a recipe on Margaret Roach’s blog A Way to Garden, modified it to my own kitchen and kitchen garden harvest, gave it a new name, and voila!

Taste of India Butternut Soup

1 medium size butternut squash

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 onion, diced

4 cloves garlic, chopped

2 tablespoons garam masala

13.5 fl. oz. can coconut milk, unsweetened

2 cans water

Garnish with a pinch of calendula petals atop a nest of freshly chopped chives

Halve butternut squash, scoop out seeds, and place flesh-side down on baking sheet in a 400-degree oven. Roast until soft. Cool, then scoop and mash the flesh, discarding skin.

Sauté onion and garlic in olive oil until soft. Add garam masala and cook a little longer.

Place mashed squash into soup pot and add spiced onion and garlic. Add coconut milk and water. Bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer 45 minutes. At that point, cool and ladle about half of the soup into a blender and puree. Add puree to soup, leaving some chunks for texture, and heat to serve. Garnish with chopped chives with a few calendula petals on top. (Or any fresh herb you have handy.) Laurie Lynch 

Wedding Wandering: My mother and I spent last weekend at the wedding of Celso (our Brazilian Rotary Exchange Student from years ago) and Sarah at the lovely Washington’s Crossing Inn on the Delaware. The celebration among family and friends led to much storytelling. I especially enjoyed the remarks by a fellow who met Celso when they were both students at Kutztown University. I can’t remember if he misheard a conversation or what, but the young man originally thought Celso’s name was “Cellphone”. These high-tech youngsters.

While my mom and I were waiting outside the restroom, she struck up a conversation with a gentleman who was waiting for his wife. I was otherwise occupied until the man came up to me and said, laughing, “She’s frisky!”

“Frisky? She’s 85 years old!” I replied.

“She can’t be,” he said.

“I’m not 85,” my mom agreed.

Exasperated, I firmly said, “Look, I’m her mother so I know she’s 85.” Oops, I meant to say “her daughter.”

The fellow looked at the two of us and said, “You’ve both had too much to drink!”

River Wandering: On Sunday, we took the scenic way home and drove up along the Delaware River to Frenchtown. I have been looking forward to visiting the shop “Two Buttons” run by Elizabeth Gilbert and her Brazilian husband. (Elizabeth wrote Eat, Pray, Love, among other books.) The shop is filled with Balinese delights and the coolest dressing room I’ve ever seen.

Two Buttons Dressing Room

Web Wandering: My chef-phew Wille got a story published on the Edible DC website. Check it out. I hope he will make us some pici when he returns.

http://edibledc.com/recipes/tuscan-countryside/

Fleur-de-Calendula

Gardens work in mysterious ways. The Ianto Evan’s polyculture garden I started in spring produced zillions of radishes, meager chard and carrots in summer, but late summer into fall it has become a gold rush of calendula flowers.

I’ve read about Calendula officinalis for years, but I’ve never grown these rays of yellow, gold, and orange. What a pity.

With the cold weather moving in, I wondered how to preserve this treasure trove of blossoms.

Calendula seems to be the Superwoman of herbs. Its anti-inflammatory and healing properties are touted for urinary tract infections, athlete’s foot, and pink eye.

The tea can be used as a gargle for sore throat or a mouth rinse for canker sores or ulcers. A drink of calendula petals will ease tummy aches, calm painful menstruation, and reduce fever by inducing sweat (but please, no more than 2 cups per day). A dab of calendula brew on a cotton ball is reported to be good for anything from diaper rash and insect bites to burns, wounds, and acne. Why, if you have an itchy scalp you can even rinse your hair with it.

With all herbs, there are a few caveats: first, go slow and don’t go overboard. And, the big one: If there is any chance that you are pregnant, steer clear of using calendula internally, as it stimulates menstruation. But, from what I’ve read, a pregnant woman can use it externally as a salve or massage oil. It is said to relieve lymph congestion, reduce stretch marks, and ease breast soreness.

So, getting back to my calendula patch. I decided to dry a basket of the flowers. I read that “overnight is usually long enough to dry the delicate blossoms”. Well, I turned my dehydrator on the lowest setting on a Wednesday evening and figured by morning, I’d have dried blossoms. Wrong. I went to work, got home, and they still weren’t dry. Thursday night. All day Friday. Friday night. Finally, on Saturday afternoon, they were ready to be placed in glass jars for keeping. 72 hours, not 12, too, too long.

One teaspoon of the dried herb in tea ball with a cup or so of steaming water, steeped for about 15 minutes, is all it takes to make the magic potion, when I need it.

In the meantime, soup season is approaching. I’ve heard it said that in Holland no broth is made without calendula petals. That, I will enjoy trying. There is something poetic about sprinkling these tissue-paper thin petals in a soup pot, conjuring up its peasant name—pot marigold—the poor woman’s substitute for saffron. Laurie Lynch

Spirit of the Mountains: With the change of the season, I’ve been listening to a CD created by my girlfriend Mary’s husband, Harrison Edwards, many years ago. It remains a favorite. “A collection of vivid instrumental music inviting you to soar with the thousands of hawks and migrating raptors as they pass over Hawk Mountain as they pass each year during their fall migration.” Soaring I am, even in Centre County.

Calendula Petals, Pure Herbal Gold

Spirit of Tuscany: My chef-phew Wille has been working in the kitchen of an Italian resort since early September, soaking up the sunshine, landscapes, and the romance of Tuscany.

“I fell in love…” he said in a phone call that sounded as close as if he were calling from Tyrone. There was a hesitation, a pause, “…with pecorino.”

“Oh, the cheese (specifically, ewe’s milk cheese),” I answered the little trickster. He reports that in Tuscany, pecorino can be eaten alone or accompany “salumi,” the Italian equivalent of the French term “charcuterie,” or, as we say in the USA, “preserved meat.” Pecorino is also beloved for dessert when it is eaten with a slice of pear, just like Wille’s Nonno used to do at our dining room table.

Wille’s favorite salumi are two “oldies”: prosciutto crudo (cured ham) and salame (spiced, salted pork and pork fat forced into casing and aged for several months) and a new discovery: finocchiona, minced pork and fennel forced into casing and cured. And I’m sure he washes them all down with plenty of Tuscan wine.

At the resort, there is a different menu every day for the vacationers—Tuesday night is always outdoor pizza oven night—and sometimes Wille even cooks staff meals for 35, which includes the kitchen, farm, maintenance and laundry crews. Quite an experience.

An Old Italian Saying: “Non far sapere al contadino quant’e buona la pera col pecorino.” (Don’t let the farmer discover how tasty pears with cheese are.)