Fleur-de-End17

Around the world in 365 days and I didn’t use my passport once. This is my 28^th blog entry for the year and over that time it was read in 40 countries including the USA. It boggles my mind that through the wonders of WordPress.com I can easily send out my kitchen and garden adventures, recipes, photos, and miscellaneous thoughts to the Internet and then track readership!

I want to thank all of you who have read faithfully over the years—and those of you who are new to the blog. Just for the heck of it, I will list all of the countries whose residents visited Fleur-de-Blog this past year: Algeria, Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Greece, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Oman, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom and the United States of America. I value your comments and emails, and hope to hear from more of you in 2018. Laurie Lynch

Resolutions, Resolutions: If you need a little inspiration for the coming year, click on the following link. For many years Wendell Berry has been encouraging everyone to eat responsibly by participating, preparing, and learning.

https://colchesterfarm.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/wendell-berry-the-pleasures-of-eating.pdf

Nest of Vegetables: We signed up for winter shares from Plowshare Produce again and we are reveling in roasted vegetables and velvety spinach salads. Our newest favorite recipe is Greens Quiche with Celeriac Crust, adapted from Simply In Season and shared through PP’s newsletter.

For the crust, mix together in pie pan:

3 cups shredded celeriac (or potatoes)

3Tbsp olive oil

Press into shape and bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes or until it begins to brown. While the crust is baking, beat together:

3 eggs

1 cup milk

¼ tsp. salt and pepper

1 tsp. dried parsley

Arrange on baked crust in order given:

¼ cup onions, chopped

1 cup cheese, shredded

1 bunch greens, chopped and sautéed

½ cup cooked bacon or ham, or chopped and sautéed mushrooms

Pour egg mixture on top. Bake at 425 for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake until browned on top and set in the middle, another 25-30 minutes. Allow your “nest egg” to cool 10-15 minutes before serving.

Cook’s notes: I tend to overfill when it comes to vegetables and I paid for it when I made this dish: Major overflow into the bottom of the oven. Next time, I’ll use a deep-dish pie pan or even a casserole. Also, I found some beautiful bunches of tatsoi at the Boalsburg Farmers Market and used it as my greens, chopped raw, without sautéing, and it was perfect.

Written on Slate: “No Seed, No Food. Know Seed, Know Food.” Ken Greene, Founder of the Hudson Valley Seed Library

 

Fleur-de-WordNerd

It must be an occupational hazard.  One of my favorite Christmas tunes is “Up on the Rooftop” where reindeer pause with Santa Claus.

Working for a roofing company can get hectic during the holiday season.  First of all, our customers want to make sure their rooftops are winter-ready.  Then, there is Thanksgiving, Hunting Season, St. Nicholas Day, Christmas, in rapid succession.  It is vacation time for many of our guys.  Regardless, roof leaks wait for no one.

And neither do fall leaves, which clog gutters and downspouts, keeping our roof maintenance department with barely a moment to pause as they inspect and clean debris from the roofs of approximately 250 properties.  Each of these inspections produces a pile of paperwork, with photographs, descriptions, and checklists.  Most inspection reports run three to five pages, but some may be 14, 22, or 36 pages long.  My job is to make those reports legible, understandable, and easy for the owner to sit at a desk and get a rooftop perspective of the property.

‘Tis the season.

Editing is a thankless job but it can be done in a warm office with a sturdy roof overhead, protected from wind, sleet, snow, and downpours.  The same can’t be said for the working conditions of our maintenance techs.  But sitting at a computer all day does have its downside—words start dancing across the screen, click, click, click.

When I was working on about the 200^th fall inspection report, I stared at the words “tears in the roof membrane” and couldn’t make sense of them.  I kept reading it as “tears” (as in teardrops), not “tears” (as in rips, punctures, gashes, slices, stiletto heel jabs, broken beer bottle slashes).  Ah, this English language of ours.

It was time for lunch so I went home to see my son and co-word nerd, Richard.  Out of the blue he asks, “How do you spell trough?”

“T-r-o-u-g-h,” I answer.

“No, can’t be.  Since when does a ‘gh’ sound like ‘f’ or ‘ph’?”

Caught off guard, I didn’t have the presence of mind to say, “Well, how do you spell ‘cough’?”  No, I just said, “Blame it on the Brits.  It’s their language.”

Now this was an especially low blow to a fellow who was born in the Lehigh Valley, raised in Kutztown, but college educated in Europe.  He insists on pronouncing the word aluminum “al -loo-min-ee-um.”

“Well Mom, I can’t help it if Americans spell aluminium incorrectly.”

He’s right, you know.  An English chemist named Sir Humphry Davy named the new element he discovered in 1807 “alumium”.  Then, he changed it to “aluminum”.  In 1812, he settled on “aluminium” which coincidentally rhymes with the other “ium” elements: sodium, potassium, and magnesium.

Meanwhile, in the good old US of A, the spelling flip-flopped between the “um” and “ium” endings until the 1900s, when the “um” spelling took over.  In 1925, the American Chemical Society officially adopted the “um” ending.  The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry wouldn’t stand for that.  In 1990 the IUPAC officially standardized the correct spelling as “aluminium”.  Needless to say, that did little to change the way Americans pronounce or spell the damn word.

Words can play tricks on you.

Again, I’m back in the office editing inspections and sending out invoices before 2017 comes to an end. I keep looking at the work “Restraunt”.  I know it looks wrong, but I can’t figure out how to fix it.  Finally, I just place my cursor at the end of the word and backspace until I have “Rest”.  Then I let my fingers do the typing: “Restaurant”.

It’s likely that some of our roofers didn’t win their 8^th grade spelling bees.  They were the fellows in gym class who shimmied up the rope to the rafters…and let go…or the ones who fiddled with wrenches and saws in shop class.  They know how to trace a stained ceiling tile in an office to the exact location on the roof where they’ll find a hole no larger than an infant’s fingernail. And more amazingly, they perform this magic a dozen building stories in the air, in all kinds of weather.

For the most part roofers are men of few words (in six years I’ve yet to meet a female roofer). One of my editing pet peeves is that they consistently neglect to say or write two specific words: To Be.  “The roof needs repaired.”  “The gutter needs strapped.”  “The ridge cap needs replaced.”  The missing “to be” problem is a Central Pennsylvania phenomenon. Some blame it on Scots-Irish settlers. Academics call the omission a “lazy contraction” or simply a “non-standard” use.  I was raised in Central PA too, so it is a grammatical point that needs watched, ho, ho, ho.

The minute I say roofers are men of few words they contradict me.  I’m reading an inspection report when I get to the summary sentence: “The roof area seemed to be in good condition at the time of inspection.”

It is my job to say (to myself): “Hey, you guys are professionals. You may need perimeter warning lines or raptor rails or safety monitors when you are on a roof, but when you are concluding your inspection report don’t get wordy just to be safe. Tell it like it is.  ‘The roof is in good condition.’  Done.  Finished.”

‘Tis the season.

Soon after Thanksgiving, the office “goodie” table begins to fill up with cookies and toffees, sugared pecans and salty pita chips, cheese dips, jams, jellies, salsas, all sorts of holiday edibles.  One of the first gifts to arrive are two stacks of bright red boxes with 8-inch or so tall chocolate letters standing at attention under a window of cellophane.

We get them each year from ATAS (Aluminum Trim And Shapes) International, manufacturer of metal roof and wall systems, headquartered in Allentown.  Jack and Nel Bus started the business in their home basement in 1963 after the couple and their eight children moved from The Netherlands to Canada to the US.

In The Netherlands, Sinterklass (St. Nicholas, patron saint of children) appears with his helper Piet (Peter) to visit children from mid-November through Dec. 5, the eve of St. Nicholas Day.  During this festive time it is traditional to give a chocolate letter corresponding to the first letter of a child’s first name, N for Nell or W for Will, as a special treat. The Bus family rekindles the tradition by sending chocolate letters spelling out ATAS to their customers.

For some reason they always send our office two sets of chocolate letters—A-T-A-S, A-T-A-S.  The editor in me thinks it is time for a word scramble—but the chocolate letters disappear before I can work on any spelling games.  Merry Mary Marry! Laurie Lynch

Written on Slate: “Logic will get you from A to Z; Imagination will get you everywhere.” Albert Einstein

 

 

 

Fleur-de-Dumas

It is one thing to travel back to the tables and kitchens of mid-1800s France, but imagine your tour guide is the swashbuckling author of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo.

That’s exactly the trip I took when I opened Dumas on Food by Alan and Jane Davidson which features selections from and translations of Alexandre Dumas’ Le Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine.

(Before we get too involved in food, let me note that in French literature there are two writers by the name of Alexandre Dumas. The first is referred to as Alexandre Dumas, père—the father—which distinguishes him from his son, Alexandre Dumas, fils. Now that we’ve cleared that up, père Dumas (1802-1870) wrote hundreds of books during his lifetime. Le Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine was published after his death in 1873. Fils Dumas (1824-1895) was a novelist and playwright. His romantic novel La Dame aux camélias was adapted into Giuseppe Verdi’s opera La Traviata.)

PJM Blooming in December

But it is the père that I am writing about. Dumas on Food follows the dictionary style, beginning with Absinthe and ending with Zeste, with an exhausting examination of fish and fowl, and all things that crept, crawled, and slithered into the Dumas kitchen or tables of his travels. We’re talking heavy on hermit crabs, dog, kangaroo, and sea anemones, as well as bacon, barbel, barracuda, bear, beef, blackbird, boar, bonito, bream, brill, and burbot—and those are just the Bs. By the time I reached the Ps, Dumas was recalling a trip of Saint Tropez where, in the middle of a public square, tables were laden with a feast. The feature of the meal was roasted Peacock/Paon with its raised sapphire neck in the front and its tail feathers spread in a fan, bringing up the rear, roast bird in the middle.  My stomach turned a couple of times at the image and I was ready to say my vegetarian vows.

I don’t mean to infer that Dumas forgot vegetables in his dictionary. It is just that they are simply a side dish to what could be shot in the woods or plucked from river or sea. One of the most beneficial things for me was the French food coupled with the English translation, reinforcing my elementary French lessons: Asparagus/Asperge, Beetroot/Betterave, Eggplant/Aubergine, Garlic/Ail au singulier, Aulx au pluriel, and Onion/Oignon. Of course Dumas wrote Le Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine in French and Dumas on Food contains English translations of selections from the original.

Dumas on Food is peppered with food story gems and delightful descriptions too.

He writes that Fennel/Fenouil is an aromatic plant popular in southern Italy where it is eaten like celery.  “It is not unusual to see working people with a bunch of fennel under the arm and making their lunch or dinner of this, accompanied by bread.”

Dumas explains that the lowly Peanut/Arachide is also called pistache de terre (the pistachio of the earth) and he refers to the Pimento/Piment, as the “coral of the gardens” due to the red color and variety of shapes. Within the pages, Dumas describes of the best way to skin an eel, how to tell if an egg is fresh, and, if you dare, how to use the juice of 12 ducks to flavor 15 poached eggs.

Cardinal with Amaryllis

One of my favorite passages was on Butter/Beurre:

“In a few counties where I have travelled, I have always had freshly made butter, made on the day itself. Here, for the benefit of travelers, is my recipe; it is very simple, and at the same time foolproof.

“Whenever I could find cow’s milk or camel’s milk, mare’s milk, goat’s milk, and particularly goat’s milk, I got some. I filled a bottle three quarters full, I stopped it up and I hung it around the neck of my horse. I left the rest up to the horse. In the evening, when I arrived, I broke the neck of the bottle and found, within, a piece of butter the size of a fist, which had virtually made itself. In Africa, in the Caucasus, in Sicily, in Spain, this method always worked for me.”

His story under the heading Cavaillon Melon/Cavaillon is priceless. In 1864 the Municipal Council of Cavaillon sent a letter to Dumas saying they were establishing a town library and wanted to get the best books they could to fill the shelves. Would he be kind enough to send two or three of his best novels?

“Now, I have a daughter and a son, whom I think I love equally; and I am the author of five or six hundred volumes and believe myself to be just about equally fond of them all. So I replied to the town of Cavaillon that it was not for an author to judge the merits of his books, that I thought all of my books good, but that I found Cavaillon melons excellent; and that I consequently proposed to send to the town of Cavaillon a complete set of my works, that is to say four or five hundred volumes, if the municipal council would be willing to vote me a life annuity of twelve green melons.”

The municipal council unanimously endorsed his request. Sources say Dumas sent 194 of his books to the Cavaillon library, and the town of Cavaillon sent Dumas a dozen melons each year, without fail. “I therefore have only one desire to express, which is that the people of Cavaillon will find my books as charming as I find their melons.” What a guy! Laurie Lynch

Written on Slate: “Everyone recognizes the smell of garlic, except the person who has eaten it and who has no idea why everyone turns away when he approaches.” Alexandre Dumas

3 Musketeers: It is not often that a novel is so popular that it takes on a new life as a candy bar. But that is exactly what happened in 1932 when M&M/Mars created 3 Musketeers. It was originally three mini-bars of chocolate, vanilla and strawberry nougat—sort of a candy rendition of Neapolitan ice cream. By 1945, chocolate won out and became the full bar that we know today.

A Holiday Gift: In the past few weeks, three people (including my daughter Marina) have requested my Cranberry Upside-Down Cake recipe. I checked my blog, and it turns out I’ve never shared it with all of you—a true blunder. But, I can be forgiven—Cranberry is omitted from Dumas on Food as well.

In Kutztown, I often made this cake for Christmas breakfast. That expanded to Thanksgiving Day for snacking, Christmas dessert, and, since cranberries are so easy to freeze, to a lovely Valentine’s Day treat. ‘Tis the season for cranberries:

Cranberry Upside-Down Cake

1 stick butter, room temperature

1 cup sugar

1 bag fresh cranberries, rinsed and dried

Rind of 1 orange

1 large egg

1 tsp. vanilla

1¼ cup flour

1½ tsp. baking powder

½ cup milk

1/3 cup red currant jelly, orange marmalade or your choice

Butter a 9-inch round pie dish with 2 tablespoons butter. Sprinkle ½ cup sugar evenly over the bottom of pan. Arrange cranberries in pan. Put orange rind in food processor with metal blade. Add remaining sugar and chop fine. Cream together remaining butter and sugar mixture. Add egg and vanilla. Sift together flour and baking powder. Stir into butter mixture, ½ cup at a time, alternating with milk. Stir until just combined. Pour batter over cranberries and bake on baking sheet at 350° for 1 hour. Cool on rack for 20 minutes. Melt jelly or marmalade over low heat. When cake is cooled, run knife around edge and invert on plate. Brush top and sides with melted jelly.

P.S. I often omit the jelly glaze part and it turns out fine.

Written on Slate: “I made cranberry sauce, and when it was done put it into a dark blue bowl for the beautiful contrast. I was thinking, doing this, about the old ways of gratitude: Indians thanking the deer they’d slain, grace before supper, kneeling before bed. I was thinking that gratitude is too much absent from our lives now, and we need it back, even if it only takes the form of acknowledging the blue of a bowl against the red of cranberries.” Elizabeth Berg