Posts Tagged ‘winter’

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Seaweed harvest

Saturday, March 26th, 2011

Today I went to Beach Road Beach to gather seaweed for the garden. BRB is a utility drop in Seawall where the cables stretch across the channel to Little Cranberry and Islesboro. The beach faces into the prevailing wind and parallel to the current so occasionally huge rafts of seaweed pile up during storms, only to be washed away again at the next moon tide. And it’s a beautiful place to spend a Saturday afternoon.

Winter seaweed is friable – naturally freeze-dried by the weather – and therefore easier to pick up and cart off than ripe, wet summer kelp. There are fewer people and their dogs leaving messes on the beach, less trash in the water, and a lot fewer mosquitoes too, so I often go down to Seawall over the course of March and April and load up 6 large garbage bags per trip. You don’t need a pick-up truck – the 20 year old sedan will do fine as long as it’s a Volvo with plenty of ground clearance and studded tires.

It was 35 degrees and blowing a small craft warning this afternoon, but there was plenty of seaweed and I had the place all to myself. I might have to go back tomorrow. . .

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Posted in gardening, horticulture, the neighborhood, vegetable garden | No Comments »

Snow

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011

Snow has been falling for thirty hours now. Not very hard, and not much is piling up on the March-thawed ground, but still – thirty hours! Not much to do about it but post a picture, and a poem by Margaret Atwood. Ms. Atwood is from Canada and knows a thing or two about March. Or February.

February

by Margaret Atwood

Winter. Time to eat fat
and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,
a black fur sausage with yellow
Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries
to get onto my head. It’s his
way of telling whether or not I’m dead.
If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am
He’ll think of something. He settles
on my chest, breathing his breath
of burped-up meat and musty sofas,
purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,
not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,
declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,
which are what will finish us off
in the long run. Some cat owners around here
should snip a few testicles. If we wise
hominids were sensible, we’d do that too,
or eat our young, like sharks.
But it’s love that does us in. Over and over
again, He shoots, he scores! and famine
crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing
eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits
thirty below, and pollution pours
out of our chimneys to keep us warm.
February, month of despair,
with a skewered heart in the centre.
I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries
with a splash of vinegar.
Cat, enough of your greedy whining
and your small pink bumhole.
Off my face! You’re the life principle,
more or less, so get going
on a little optimism around here.
Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.

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Posted in Maine, the backyard, the neighborhood, Town Hill | No Comments »

Winter honey

Sunday, March 20th, 2011

Bee colonies die over the course of the Maine winter for all kinds of reasons. The most common is starvation. We have a short summer of very long days and the bees are well, busy, from April when the maples throw their nearly invisible flowers through early November and the last of the goldenrod. Some summers we have a drought in August that kills off any chance at an autumn honeycrop, and that’s what happened in 2010. I encourage goldenrod in my garden and have even planted a few hybrid varieties to lengthen the season, and I grow Japanese buckwheat and autumn blooming clematis, but sometimes it’s just not enough.

Some winters a colony doesn’t make it through for other reasons. My autopsy of “Stripey” found a medium number of dead bees and a lot of honey so- not starved. I couldn’t find the queen but that’s not unusual in a dead hive. There were some pupae and larvae in evidence but not nearly enough. The colony may have been weakened by a late season swarm that I missed, or the queen may have been old. In any case, it was time to clean house. Mice and red squirrels will nest in a hive that has honey comb and no bees to defend it and they make a terrible mess of the equipment.

I opened the hive, lifted out the frames and scraped the comb into a 10 gallon food bucket with a petcock in the bottom. I cut the comb up into chunks with the flat end of my hive tool and let it sit overnight in front of the Rinnai heater. There was no evidence of disease in the hive, so I wrapped the scrapped frames in plastic and put them in the freezer. I’ll feed them to the new colonies that will be arriving in early May. This afternoon I drained the honey out of the bucket into jars through a strainer. It was much slower work today than it was last July, when the summer heat made the honey flow like water. This batch is very dark, with flavors of buckwheat, goldenrod and asters.

I filled 8 pint jars and had enough left over for honey cake. Honey cake!

For the Cake

  • 3/4 cup brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/2 cup vegetable oil
  • 3 eggs
  • 3 tablespoons orange juice
  • 1 teaspoon finely minced orange or lemon zest
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon ( or 1/2 teaspoon for a more pronounced cinnamon flavor) and 1/4 tsp cardamon
  • 1/2 cup matzoh cake meal and 1/2 cup all – purpose flour
  • (I add 1/2 tsp baking powder. The addition of leavening to the recipe, at this time of year, means this isn’t traditional! My apologies to Julia, who gave me this recipe.)
  • 1 and 1/2 cup finely chopped hazelnuts or almonds or walnuts, or a combination. Black walnuts are very nice.

For the Syrup

  • 1 cup honey
  • 1/3 cup orange juice
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Generously grease a 8″ square pan.

Using a wire whisk, beat the granulated and brown sugars with the oil and eggs until the mixture is thick and pale yellow. (If you’re a little impatient and don’t get them quite to the “pale yellow” stage it’s OK – you’re using baking powder!) Stir in the remaining batter ingredients. Turn the batter into the prepared pan.

Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until the top is light brown and set. Cool for at least 20 minutes. Meanwhile, mix the syrup ingredients together in a small bowl. A whisk is helpful for blending the honey and OJ.

Pour the syrup over the cooled cake, poking holes in the cake with a fork, to permit the syrup to penetrate. Allow it to stand for 2 to 4 hours to absorb the syrup. Refrigerate so that while it is absorbing the liquid, it is also firming up.  Serve small pieces on splayed muffin liners. It’s also very nice served with sliced strawberries and drizzled with more honey.

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Posted in bees, Cooking, dessert, ethnic, recipe | No Comments »

What’s for dinner?

Saturday, March 5th, 2011

I love cauliflower and it seems to hold up well in the grocery store vegetable aisle all through the winter. This recipe is a gratin that uses heavy cream rather than cheese with mustard, shallots and sage. I use Raye’s mustard, and for this recipe I used their “Winter Garden” variety (my favorite), which incorporates horseradish and herbs. Raye’s is a traditional stone-ground mustard mill in Eastport – now a working museum. They also make mustard with maple syrup, molasses, and local beer, so this recipe could take on different varieties for a change of pace.

An opportunity to use my favorite blue Crueset dutch oven!

I also managed to use upty-million utensils, but that’s something I can correct the next time.

Cauliflower Gratin with Mustard

4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter, divided
1/2 cup chopped shallots or winter onions
1 cauliflower cut into 1 1/2-inch cauliflower florets – about4 cups? Up to 6 cups would probably be fine.
1/4 cup white wine and  1  cup vegetable broth
3/4 cup heavy whipping cream
2 tablespoons Raye’s mustard (divided)
2 tsp chopped fresh sage or slightly less dried
1 tablespoon all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon finely grated lemon peel
2 cups coarsely cut bread crumbs

Preheat oven to 375°F. Melt 2 tablespoons butter in heavy large pot over medium-high heat. Add shallots; sauté until beginning to soften, about 4 minutes. Add cauliflower. Sprinkle with salt and pepper; toss to coat. Add wine, and then broth. Cover and steam until cauliflower is just tender, 8 to 10 minutes.

Using slotted spoon, transfer cauliflower to bowl. Add cream, 1 Tbs mustard, 1 teaspoon sage, flour, and lemon peel to pot. Boil until sauce is thick, whisking, about 1 minute. Season with salt and pepper. Toss in cauliflower. Arrange cauliflower, stem side down, with sauce in 11 x 7 x 2-inch baking dish.

Melt 2 tablespoons butter in medium skillet over medium heat. Whisk in 1  tablespoon mustard and 1 tsp sage. Addcrumbs; toss to coat. Spoon crumbs over cauliflower. Bake until topping is golden, 20 to 25 minutes.

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Posted in Cooking, main dish, recipe, the neighborhood | No Comments »

Molasses crinkles

Sunday, February 27th, 2011

My grandmother, Martha Louise Miller Barnard Snyder, was born left-handed and forced to use her right hand at school. I have always been fascinated by her handwriting: studied and careful, almost childlike and without any of the affectations that usually accumulate over a lifetime of repetitive movement. There’s nothing very personal about her marks except the sheer impersonality of the textbook isolation of each nicely formed letter. Her teachers might have been able to force her to write with the wrong hand, but she wasn’t going to cave and accept it.

Grandma’s molasses crinkles are wonderful – perfect for making the house smell warmly of spices on a frigid Sunday afternoon. Here is the recipe in her handwriting:

The arrow points to a note that her right-handed daughter, Cynthia wrote on the other side. Cynthia has a school-based hand, too – familiar to anyone who went to school more than 20 years ago in New England.

A note from me, too: leave them ball shaped, don’t flatten into discs. They are very delicate and will spread out on their own while baking. I add a Tbs of sour cream to the shortening, sugar, molasses mixture to help out the baking soda.

Now I’m off to get a cup of tea and a cookie.

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Posted in Cooking, dessert, family, recipe | 2 Comments »

Sumer is i-cumin in. Really.

Friday, February 11th, 2011

I am entirely sick of winter. Therefore:

The Cuckoo Song

by Anonymous

Sing, cuccu, nu. Sing, cuccu.
Sing, cuccu. Sing, cuccu, nu.
Sumer is i-cumin in—
Lhude sing, cuccu!
Groweth sed and bloweth med
And springth the wude nu.
Sing, cuccu!

Awe bleteth after lomb,
Lhouth after calve cu,
Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth—
Murie sing, cuccu!
Cuccu, cuccu,
Wel singes thu, cuccu.
Ne swik thu naver nu!

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Posted in Maine, the backyard, the neighborhood | No Comments »

Snow

Monday, February 7th, 2011

Too much of a good thing. . .

. . .was too much for the woven fabric cover on the hoop house. Saturday’s storm included rain and the weight opened a huge rip between two bays. Fortunately, the metal ribs are undamaged and another cover will be easy to come by.

My family gave me the hoop house 12 years ago on Valentine’s Day. I ordered it from an outfit called “Cover-It”, now evidently defunct. They made amazing portable structures: airplane hangers, hospitals for war zones in Afghanistan, portable prisons, and hobby greenhouses. My 12′  x 12′ x 9′ structure shipped on the same truck as one of the hospitals headed for Bangor International Airport and the Middle East.

The company was based somewhere in Florida. When I talked to the guy about delivery there were children laughing in the background, road noises and dogs barking. I told him we lived on an island in Maine and he asked; “What ocean?”. I answered that it was the Atlantic Ocean, the same ocean that he saw in Florida. He said; “What? No! It can’t be,” and I never managed to convince him that it was.

I’ll order a new tarp next week, but we’ll have to wait until spring, or at least until the snow melts down to ground level, to put it on. This is the hoop house in happier times, filled with begonias and a Brown Turkey fig.

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Posted in gardening, horticulture, Maine | No Comments »

New work

Tuesday, February 1st, 2011

It’s snowing. Snow has been falling continuously since noon and is predicted to continue until late tomorrow night with accumulations of a foot or more. When I was in college in Philadelphia I met a woman who had only recently left her home in Tallahassee and had only seen snow in pictures. She had assumed each six-pointed snowflake to be the size of a dinner plate (just like they appeared in the encyclopedia) otherwise how would they pile up into drifts of ten feet or more in Buffalo? She was very disappointed the first time it snowed in Philly and the small, tired piles on the sidewalks never resolved themselves into crystals visible to the naked eye.

It has been a blessing these past few weeks to be working on images from the summer months while the wood stove sends warmth up the stairwell to my upper room. Trudy would have liked this drawing, I think, and been impressed with sheer multitude of tiny flakes outside.

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Posted in art, still life | No Comments »

Bacon

Thursday, January 20th, 2011

I stopped at Pectic Seafood (OMG don’t click on this link if you’re allergic to Flash!) on my way home last night and picked up a pound and a half of absolutely gorgeous haddock, which is not a euphemism. While I was there I had to check out the donuts (handmade each morning) and cruise the coolers full of duck sausage and local goat cheese. There was a new display – four shelves – of bacon, so I bought a pound of Broadbent’s Country Bacon and went on my way. Donuts, bacon and fish to fry – nothing wrong with that.

We had the fish last night, dredged in matzo meal and pan fried in a little olive oil. I went all out and made tartar sauce and it was wonderful. Tonight we tried the bacon.

Oh my heavens. I’ve been eating the stuff from the grocery store and forgotten all about real bacon. Lentil stew with sweet potatoes and bacon, cheddar buttermilk biscuits, and a tossed salad – just the right menu for a Winter Storm Warning night in January.

Lenny’s Lentil Stew

Lenny was a housemate of mine long ago. This dish was his only contribution to our weekly communal dinners and to his credit no one ever complained. Double, triple or multiply this recipe by exponents – you really can’t go wrong. I’ve written like I learned it, folks – Lenny was a plain food type of guy.

For two people: get out two saucepans and fill one halfway up with water. While the water heats, peel a sweet potato and cut it into 1/2″ cubes and dump them into the now boiling water to cook until soft. In the other pan, dump in a can of lentils, 1 C tomato sauce, 2 Tbs tomato paste, 1 tsp marjoram, 2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp pepper, or Szechuan peppercorns if you have them. Heat to a simmer. Stir occasionally. Check the sweet potatoes – when done, drain and dump them into the stew. You can add little pieces of cooked bacon if you think you can slip it by the vegetarians. Serve with biscuits even if you have to buy them, but you could try to talk Amy into making a batch even if it isn’t her night to cook.

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Posted in Cooking, main dish, recipe | No Comments »

Snowshoe afternoon

Thursday, January 13th, 2011

The days are long enough now that I can go snowshoeing in the back yard after work. We have a big back yard – several thousand acres – so there are rules.

1. Get good snowshoes. There’s nothing worse than being left with one working snowshoe in 4′ of fresh powder a half a mile from home*. After dependability comes ease of use. Look for a brand or model that the reviewers think go on and off easily. These are good snowshoes:

2. Bring a stick.  My son bought the stick in the photo at the Common Ground Fair ten years ago. At the time I considered it an indulgence of his meager pay; you bought a stick? Now I kick myself for thinking that every time I grab it as I leave the house. It’s smooth, about shoulder height, lightweight but extremely sturdy and has a loop at the top. On snowshoes it provides balance, leverage and a certain amount of offensive capability, see 3.

3. On snowshoes, you are not a Ferrari. Snowshoes are wonderful for traveling in a straight line – maybe even a gentle curve – but maneuverability is not their strong suit. If you need to discourage the neighbor’s German Shepherd or knock the snow off a low hanging limb you need a stick, because getting around something like that is a pain. Avoid getting into places where you have to back up, or where the shoes don’t fit side by side, too.

4. Don’t go in the water.  This is my number one rule in winter sports anyway, but it bears repeating because you can go a lot of new places on a pair of snowshoes, even in familiar terrain. If you find yourself following a level path free of tree branches and animal tracks that’s probably a brook. Water, particularly flowing water, freezes much later than the land and sometimes not at all. If you’re new to an area try to find deer or other animal track and go where they go. Deer don’t like frozen feet any more than you do.

5. Do a straight out and back, not a circle. Particularly if you’re new at this or have a Young Padawan along for the hike you can trudge along until one or both of you is tired and sweaty, and then turn around and head back on your own tracks. It’s just like walking down a sidewalk.

6. Enjoy the view.

*People are going to be writing all night with things that are worse than losing a snowshoe buckle. All I can say in my defense is that after a long slog in the cold, dimming afternoon it seems like that would be a really bad thing.

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Posted in Acadia National Park, the backyard, the neighborhood | 2 Comments »

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