Legacies (with Soda Bread)

My first apartment in New Jersey, after I returned from the West Coast, was at the back end of a long, two story half-empty building, where the only other tenants on my floor (or so it seemed to me) were an older woman named Marcia and an older man named Harry.

Harry lived next door to me, and he hadn't been well past mid-life, I would have said he was having a midlife crisis.  He drove a red sportscar and had a bleach-blonde older girlfriend.  I didn't see much of him, beyond his comings and goings.  I may or may not have heard him (and his girlfriend) at night.

Marcia lived across the hall from me, in an apartment that always seemed to be full of steam.  Our building was perpetually cold (because our landlord was a miserly SOB, earning tax credits for his empty apartments, despite our super's best efforts to make the place liveable), and so Marcia would boil great pots of water on her stove, heating her cramped space as best she could, covering herself with hand-crocheted blankets in the most raucous of colors.  When I knocked at her door, I knew that I'd be in for an hour long conversation, and that she would implore me (in a way that was impossible to refuse: "Zhus-tin," she would call) to come, to sit, and to eat: small hard blueberry muffins, or dry crumbly cookies, or something that her son had brought, which was "too much" for her to eat alone.

Marcia was a Holocaust survivor.  Her sister, who lived in Brazil, was her only other surviving relative; sometimes when I went to visit, as I often did on the weekends or after work, I would find her laboring over her letters, or talking a million miles an hour in Hebrew, long distance.  She never told me her story, though she alluded to it; she didn't want to talk about it, she said, because it was too sad for me.  (She eventually published a memoir, here, which I discovered just this week.) I never understood what she meant by that, but I told her it was OK, and that I loved her, and that I was glad I lived there with her, grateful for her friendship. On rare occasions, wiping away her tears, she would confide to me she thought she was spared for Ora, her granddaughter, to leave her legacy with her. Selfishly, sometimes, though I would never tell her so, I thought she was spared for me, too.

I dated my husband when I lived there, and when we got engaged, she was one of the first people we told.  I remember her blessing us, and trembling with joy, and telling me how sad she was that I would be leaving, but what a happy life we would have together.  One day she called us in, presenting us with a wedding present: a silver serving plate, embossed in great detail with grapes and leaves and vines. She told us that it was symbolic; that in Jewish weddings the secret to happiness is in the blessings over the wine.

We visited her occasionally those first few years; she left our complex not long after I did, when her son, finally taking issue with the lack of heat and other creature comforts, decided to buy a condominium for her with a scenic view of the park that boundaried the nearby river.  I loved seeing her in her new place, with the same crocheted blankets flung over the backs of furniture.  She still fed us cookies and fruit and tea.  But after my son was born, we slowly lost touch.

We don't have much in the way of fancy serving ware, but every once in a while, we use Marcia's plate for a special occasion, usually to serve bread, wrapped in a cloth napkin; every time, I remember her blessings.

I took Marcia's plate out of the cabinet last week, thinking that I'd put it in the bin to bring over to the new house, and decided to polish it up a bit first.  I hadn't realized that it had so tarnished over the years that the spaces between the details were outlined in black; S. and I both thought it had been that way always.  I scrubbed and scrubbed with polish and paper towel; we tried a soft-bristled toothbrush to get the polish in between the cracks; S. tried submerging it with aluminum foil in a baking soda solution.  I've spent hours on the project, and though in some spots it now gleams, still, the more I polish it, the more I see the tarnish left where I have more work to do.  Marcia, reminding us not to put her away for too long this time, to do the hard work of memory that keeps legacies visible.

Legacies are complicated things.  We never know what kind of impressions we've made.  But I hope that I'll leave behind pieces of myself that are as stubborn and beautiful as Marcia's are, even now.

Soda Bread
A friend shared this recipe, and refers to it as "Mother Hudak's" Soda Bread.  I don't know who Mother Hudak is, but I'm glad that she's left me this piece of herself, whoever she is.  Though it's from a very different tradition, it's actually not all that different from something we might have been served at Marcia's over tea.

2 c flour
1 ½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
½ c sugar
1 c raisins
1 egg
1 c sour cream
¼ c milk

Preheat oven to 350, and prepare a baking pan by greasing it or lining it with parchment.

Sift dry ingredients together in a large bowl with a whisk.  Add raisins to mixture.

Beat egg and make a hole in center of mixture – add beaten egg, and mix well with a fork.

Cream together and add to bread mixture the sour cream and milk. Fold dough together gently using a spatula.

Dump the dough from the bowl onto the pan and shape into a loaf; bake for 35 minutes to an hour depending on how crusty you like it.  When crust looks brown and done, it’s likely not baked thoroughly inside.  You'll likely want to cover the bread with aluminum foil on top and continue baking for ~ 15 more minutes.

Being Prepared, and Powdermilk Biscuits

There are, I suspect, a few moments in everyone's life when you feel completely unprepared to be you.

Like, for example, the first time you walk out of a hospital with a baby in an infant car seat.

"They're just letting us leave," I'd said to my husband, amazed, as the double doors swung open and we stepped into the hallway, baby bucket in hand.  "Don't they know we don't know what we're doing?"

"My father tells me that by the second day, you're an expert," my husband reassured me, with less than complete confidence in his voice.

It turns out, of course, that you're not an expert by day two.  Or by year seven.  Or, from what I can tell, by year forty.  But you muddle through somehow, and some days you feel like you have conquered the windmill, and other days you use every atom in your body to combat feeling like a failure.  And behind it all, maybe you sit with amused disbelief that you're really the one in charge; maybe, like me, you marvel at how this could possibly have happened.

Last night, as I walked from the dark parking lot towards my son's school for second grade parent-teacher conference, I felt that amused disbelief again.  Here we were, a handful of shadowy figures, older that we believed ourselves to be, marching towards responsibility, for which we were, at best, laughably prepared.  My mother was the one who went to parent-teacher conferences.  But me?  The thought is still weird.

My son's teacher is a very sweet, energetic, and enthusiastic twenty-something who says "like" a lot and probably sees me as "one of those older parents who wants to linger too long."  Like my mother would have been.  She tells me how well my son is doing, what a delight he is, walks me to the door, and I feel a little like I'm being herded.  Maybe I fit this role better than I think I do.

photo credit: S. Levine

Powdermilk Biscuits
My husband made biscuits the other night, because he's much more like an adult some days than I am, because we had leftover powered milk, and because they "give shy persons the strength to get up and do what needs to be done. Heavens, they're tasty and expeditious."

2 - 2 1/4 c. flour
1/2 t. salt
3 t. baking powder
3-5 T. softened butter
1/4 c. powdered milk & 3/4 c. water (or just 3/4 c. milk--but powdered is better in this recipe)
1 T. sugar

Preheat oven to 450F.

Combine all dry ingredients and cut butter in with a pastry blender until you have small crumbs.

 

Add wet ingredients; if you need more flour to get the dough into rollable form, feel free to add a bit.  It should still be somewhat sticky.

Roll out dough onto a floured surface, and use a round object of your choice to cut out biscuits.

Bake 10-12 minutes or until tops are lightly browned.

Jane Eyre, Feminism, the Gothic, and Cardamom Scones

I was eleven.  My aunt and uncle, in a moment of uncharacteristic attentiveness to my interests, had bought me a copy of Jane Eyre for my birthday; the 500-and-some-page Illustrated Junior Library edition, it boasted a full color hard cover and plastic dust jacket.  Though I remember my mother saying something about the fact that I was probably a bit too young for Jane Eyre, there was something special about that book from the beginning, about the thickness of the pages, the tantalizing illustration on the cover, its sheer weightiness.  My first real literature, perhaps.  And though I struggled a bit with the tangled language and the length of the sentences, I soon fell in love with its heroine, just as I'd fallen in love with Louisa May Alcott, Girl of Old Boston, even before I read Little Women, and Anne of Green Gables after that.  Jane Eyre is one of the few non-children's books I've read multiple times in my life, some assigned, and some not.

A few weeks ago, on the anniversary of the book's 1847 publication, the Huffington Post featured what amounted to "lessons we can learn from Jane Eyre."  I found the piece a little Pollyannish : one of the author's takeaways is "Be Positive!" as if Victorian heroines had any choice but contentment with their lot, or at least the forced moral fortitude to embrace it as a "lesson."  After all, Helen Burns tells Jane that "it is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear."  Still, it brought back fond memories of reading the book and identifying with Jane, as I identified with Alcott's Jo March: a plain, outspoken young woman who lived both completely in the world and completely apart from it.   To this day, there's something about the name I find powerful; it was on my short list of names for our daughter.

There's the proto-feminism, of course; as she leaves Thornfield, knowing that a relationship with Rochester would mean the loss of her self-respect, Jane (and, by extension, Brontë) offers some thoughts about independence which I think are relevant even now: “I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.”  While I think that oversimplifies things (do we respect ourselves for being "unsustained"? or is there something respectable about knowing how to lean on others, too? what lessons do we teach our children about finding balance between independence and interdependence?), I confess, it's a principle by which I've lived most of my life. 

And then there's the fact that Brontë gets Romanticism right for me: though I wouldn't consider myself a sucker for Romantic novels of the Victorian period, I wept through the death of Jane's friend Helen from consumption, wondering whether one got consumption now, and whether I should be wary of catching it. I remember, too, wishing for a champion like Miss Temple, and resolving to have tea in my chambers for students, should I ever end up teaching in a boarding school--a resolve which was later re-kindled by my crush on Professor Keating of Dead Poet's Society.

I was also drawn to the Gothic aspects of the novel, especially the powerful shadow-figure of Bertha Mason, and feeling sorry for her, even long before I read Wide Sargasso Sea, which attributes Rochester's rejection and her subsequent descent into madness to her (literal) "dark" Creole heritage.  Jane defends her without knowing, in her first weeks at Thornfield, musing that women "suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation"; they are, quite literally, trapped.  Bram Stoker was born the month after Jane Eyre was published, and dressing my son as Dracula this year for Halloween, I found myself thinking about the madwomen in the attic, about how Halloween enables us to plumb our own darker sides, to play with the shadows within us.  As he moved from house to house, I watched my son begin to walk differently, cape billowing behind him, fangs brilliant against the ghostly face I'd painted; he was absolutely getting into the character, in a way he hadn't done in Halloweens past.

What are the books you've read again and again?  Which literary characters have spoken to you over the years?  Did you channel your inner madwoman for Halloween?  What are your thoughts on the balance between independence and interdependence?

Cardamom Scones with Cranberries
Miss Temple offered Jane and Helen seed cake during their first visit to her chambers.  While these aren't exactly cake, I suspect that they're more like what Miss Temple had in her room, given the conditions at Lowood school, and the cardamom pods count as seeds in my book.  Enjoy them warm out of the oven on a dark night or cloudy morning,with a cup of tea.

3 c. flour
2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
3/4 t. cardamom pods (or, if you must, 1/2 t. ground cardamom)
1 stick unsalted butter
3/4 c. plain Greek yogurt
1/2 c. sugar (I used evaporated cane)
2 eggs
additional sugar for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 350F and line a baking sheet with parchment.

Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  Peel the cardamom pods and grind the seeds with a mortar and pestle (or use a very small knife and carefully chop until you have powder).  Stir the cardamom into the flour mixture.

Cut the butter in with a pastry blender or two knives until small crumbs form.  Add yogurt, sugar, and one egg, and mix (you can use your fingers).  At this point you can also add anything else you want (candied ginger, cranberries, raisins, chocolate chips).

Divide the dough into 12 equal parts (you can also use an ice cream scoop to get rough 1/3 c. balls); place the dough on the parchment.

Whisk the other egg and brush over the dough.  Sprinkle with additional sugar.

Bake 25 minutes, or until pleasantly golden brown.  Serve warm.

Advice, and Double Dark Chocolate Beet Muffins

Yesterday, my friend Kathy hosted her monthly Time Warp Tuesday blog hop.  I missed the hop, but I loved the theme for this month, which was Advice.


I tend to give a lot of advice, I suspect, not even under the guise of opinion; I probably offer it up as fact.  Though I was trained in advising, and when I'm working with students I'm careful not to give advice so much as facilitate their own inner dialogue, there are plenty of times outside of my professional duties when I offer up my own ideas about someone else's dilemmas.

I ask for advice a lot, too, but I don't take advice very well; more often than not I am--even subconsciously--looking for verification of an opinion I've already arrived at, and would like confirmation of my choice.

But the tables were turned on me a bit this week, on Sunday, when I was sitting with my son for a while before he went to sleep.

"I'm nervous about my first day," I confided.

"It's OK, Mom," he told me, "I was nervous about my first day of school, too."

"You were?" I asked, both amused and genuinely surprised.  "But you looked so confident when you waved good bye to me on the bus.  What were you most nervous about?  Meeting new people?  Having someone ask you something you didn't know the answer to?"

"Yes, not knowing the answer," he agreed. 

"Well, that's what I'm most afraid of," I said.  "That I won't know the things they want me to know."

"Well," he said, thoughtfully, "just remember, that if they ask you something you don't know, it's OK to tell them you don't know, and then ask them questions, so they can help you out."

Wow, I thought. Pretty fabulous advice for a six year old.  Better, even, than "eat your vegetables so you can grow up big and strong."

I followed his advice, and told my new boss what he'd told me that night.  "How old did you say he was?" she asked.

"Six," I said.

"He is wise beyond his years," she marveled.

Yes, I agreed.  Except when he really does act like a six year old, and thinks that poop jokes are the funniest thing ever.  And I couldn't be more grateful for both elements.
 

Double Dark Chocolate Beet Muffins

Eat your vegetables and grow up big and strong.  I made these with our CSA share to take to the Cape for the week we spent before my first day, and I told everyone right up front that they were made with beets.  That didn't seem to matter, and they were gone in less than two days.

1 c. beet puree (use about 3 good-sized beets; see below)
1 c. whole wheat flour
1 c. all-purpose flour
2 t. baking powder
1 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt

1/4 c. ground flax seed
1/2 c. Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate chips
1/4 c. butter

2/3 c. Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate chips
3/4 c. packed brown sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2/3 c. buttermilk
1 t. vanilla extract

1 T. espresso powder

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Wrap beets in foil. Place on a baking sheet; bake until beets are slightly soft to the touch, 45 minutes to 1 hour depending on their size. Cool beets in packets, then rub off skins under cold running water (use a paring knife for tough spots).  Puree one at a time until you get 1 c. (you can set aside the unpureed parts, if there are any, for a salad).  Cool completely.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Line a 12-cup muffin tin; set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and flax until well combined.  Stir in the half cup chocolate chips; set aside.

In a small saucepan, melt the other 2/3 cup chocolate chips and butter over very low heat.  Stir to combine and set aside to cool until lukewarm.

In a medium bowl, whisk together eggs, brown sugar, beet puree, buttermilk, vanilla and melted chocolate.  Pour the chocolate mixture into the dry ingredients and stir with a wooden spoon until just combined. Don’t overmix. Immediately spoon batter into prepared muffin cups.  The batter will almost completely fill the cups.

Place muffin pan in a preheated 375 oven and bake for 18-20 minutes. Muffins are done when they spring back when touched lightly in the center (or when a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean). Cool muffins for 10 minutes in pan then remove them to a wire rack to cool completely.

Perfect Moment Monday: Simple Birthdays and Strawberry Muffins

Perfect Moment Monday is a monthly blog hop/writing prompt, sponsored by Lavender Luz at Write Mind Open Heart, about noticing a perfect moment rather than creating one. Perfect moments can be momentous or ordinary or somewhere in between. On the last Monday of each month we engage in mindfulness about something that is right with our world. Everyone is welcome to join.

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When my son was old enough to start attending birthday parties, I was a little bit appalled at the kinds of birthday parties being thrown for the preschool and kindergarten aged set.  I felt lucky when he didn't complain about a party-in-the-park that turned into a big-playdate-at-our-house due to rain one year, and when he asked, at age four, for an "adults-only" celebration.  Last year, we celebrated more traditionally with a space-themed party at our house, but, type A person that I am, I spent months planning and preparing.

When we asked him what he wanted to do for his birthday this year, he told us that he only wanted one person at his party: a little girl who has been his friend and constant companion since he was a toddler.

We love A.  She has the impish grin of an elf, but the seriousness and thoughtfulness of a much older child.  She insists on wearing dresses, but also on climbing trees.  They met when my son went to Montessori school, in the Toddler House, where they spent hours together, since both sets of parents were working full time.  When they moved up to the Primary level, they went to separate classrooms, and were thrilled when those classrooms had to be combined due to some downsizing at the school.  The teachers joked that they were inseparable.  I. and A. talked about getting married, about buying a house at the beach, about how many cars and campers and tractor trailers they were going to have.  It was sweet.  And yet, maybe a little too sweet?

I wouldn't say that we tried to dissuade him from his "party for two," but we gave him every opportunity to renege on the decision. I worried about what her parents would think.  What about your other friends? we asked several times over the next month.  What about the boys?  Every time, he shook his head.  No, he'd say, firmly, I just want to have A. over.  Finally, he became annoyed, and said, in that unmistakeable teenager-y voice, "Mom, haven't you been listening to me?"

Well, I had.  But I hadn't.

I.'s birthday would be early in his first year in a new school, in a class full of people he didn't know.  Of course he wouldn't feel comfortable inviting any of those new people to a party.  And maybe he felt like he just wanted something quiet, and familiar: the companionship of a friend whom he hadn't seen since camp ended, and whom he wouldn't see again for many months.

We agreed, and I offered to take them out to tea, at a local place that does high tea the English way, with small sandwiches, scones, and small desserts.  I'd taken I. before, just the two of us, and he enjoyed the attention, the multiple courses, and feeling grown up; he swilled decaf fruit tea like a pro.  He set about designing an invitation immediately, which I didn't even get to see before he sealed it up and sent it off.  (I still don't know what it said, though A.'s parents assure us that it was entirely appropriate.)

I.'s birthday was a perfect fall day: warm but not hot, breezy without the chill.  A. arrived at mid-day, dressed in blue flowers, and I chauffered them both downtown in the MegaWagon.  We ordered one prince and one princess tea, and they chatted and giggled over banana-nutella sandwiches and strawberries and scones while I tried to eat my salad as inconspicuously as possible.  The staff came out with a candle-adorned cupcake in the middle of generous plates of desserts, and sang happy birthday, as I. beamed, and his companion looked on, grinning broadly.

When tea was over, they went browsing at the adjacent shop that sells all things porcelain, and conspiratorially ran ahead of me back to the wagon.  It was hard going on the way back, since I'd drunk an entire pot of tea by myself, and I made the usual adult groaning noises, which they thought were extremely funny.  Finally, about three quarters of the way back, they decided to pull the wagon together up the hill to our house.

And as I walked behind them, feeling the warm autumn sun on my face, I thought about the beauty of uncomplicated friendships, of the completeness of children's love, and felt grateful both that I. has a friend like A., and that he recognizes what a gem she is.  I felt glad that he didn't feel the need to have a big party in order to feel celebrated, and lucky to have a little boy who has already figured out what's really important.  At one point, I was struck by how perfect it was, watching them walk together, and I snapped this picture with my camera phone,  I hoped that they would always remember that first friendship, and remember how it's easier to pull a really large wagon when you're both holding on to the handle, bodies close together, talking, laughing, wondering about the world, and not paying attention to how heavy it is.

It's a lesson we would all do well to learn.

Happy birthday, I.  May they all be as perfect as this moment.


Strawberry Muffins
These healthy muffins are perfect for a lunchbox, a snack container, or children's tea.  Or maybe for you, to share with a friend.

1 c. regular flour
1 c. whole wheat flour
6 T. unrefined sugar or 1/4 c. agave nectar
1/2 t. salt
3 T. baking powder
1 egg or 1 flax egg (1 T. flaxseed + 3 T. water, mixed and let stand)
1 c. milk of your choice (or 3/4 c. + 2 T. milk of your choice if using agave)
3 T. grapeseed oil (melted coconut or canola will also work)
1 c. frozen strawberries, chopped into blueberry-sized chunks

Mix together dry ingredients in a large bowl.  Separately mix together wet ingredients.  Make a well in the dry ingredients and add the wet ingredients.  Stir with a wooden spoon until just moistened ... do NOT overmix!  Add the strawberries and stir gently until just combined.

Pour into 12 muffin cups and bake 12 minutes at 400 (or 13-14 minutes at 375 if using agave).

A Half Baked Breakfast: Cinnamon Buns

Mornings in my house usually go like this: N. wakes up at five thirty and stands with her nose hung over the gate at her door, shrilling "MOM!  momEEE!  MOM!  momEEEE!  mooOOOOoom!"  This means: "come get me out of this prison, please don't change my diaper because I hate that, and give me my sippy cup of milk STAT."  So I roll out of bed, oblige her (except for the diaper part, because as we all know I am the Cruelest Mom in the Universe), and begin to make breakfast while I get lunch together for my son to take to school or camp.

I. comes down at around six, and climbs up onto the kitchen stool with a surly scowl.  If I have, by some bizarre chance, not yet poured a glass of milk for him, because I was oh, I don't know ... doing TEN other things? he snarls, "Where's My MILK?"

Yep, I just can't wait to wake him up for high school.

I dish out whatever fruit we happen to have on hand (N. demanding "Tay? Tay?" meaning "Excuse me?  Put the fruit on my TRAY!  NOW!") while I'm finishing up lunch preparation, and then I. is on his own to find the rest of his breakfast, because I'm on N.-meal-supervision duty.  Though I often need to run through the list of options, usually, he's pretty good about this: he rummages through the cabinets to find cereal or granola bars, is capable of toasting himself a waffle, climbs up on top of the stools to reach condiments while giving me heart palpitations, and has even, on rare occasions, made French toast with minimal assistance.

Yesterday, when I asked him what else he was going to have for breakfast after he finished his bowl of canteloupe, he looked me square in the eye, crossed his arms, and whined dramatically, "MOM, there is NOTHING here to EAT.  I'm BORED with this food."

I laughed, told him that we had all kinds of things to eat, and he needed to choose one, and continued with the morning routine.  He grumped for about two minutes, and then poured himself a bowl of Life.

But because like my surrogate Jewish mothers I am very sensitive about the issue of having enough tasty things around the house for people to eat, it nagged at me all morning, until finally I decided to do something about it and make cinnamon buns.

My husband is the bread baker in our house, but it would probably never occur to him to make cinnamon buns, because for him, bread is a straightfoward if variable affair involving yeast, flour, water, salt, sweetener for yeast food, and heat.  It never would have occurred to me, either, except that I was going too slowly in the refrigerated dough section of our grocery store last week, saw cinnamon rolls there, and felt nostalgic for Talkeetna.

...

In 1996, the summer after my first year in graduate school, my father got it into his head that I should take a vacation.  I was living alone in LA at the time, and had been traveling up and down the West Coast to visit friends in Berkeley and San Diego, drinking in as much of the Pacific as I could, but I hadn't yet ventured too far north.  My father, in his infinite wisdom, declared that I should go to Alaska.  And, despite my insistent refusal, that he would pay for it.

It was settled.  I planned the entire trip online, in the still-early days of the internet, when first generation web pages were still the standard currency, before Twitter and Facebook, so everything was sight unseen.  I would fly to Anchorage, rent a car, drive to Seward, then backtrack north to Talkeetna, finishing in Wasilla (I had to laugh that I actually knew where Wasilla was during the last presidential campaign) and back in Anchorage.   I made reservations at B&Bs in town at all of these places, so I could walk where I needed to.  Except for Talkeetna, where there was no B&B in town.  And when I drove into Talkeetna in my rented compact, and parked at the Fairview Inn, where I'd reserved a private room, I started to worry.

You see, the Fairview was a bar.  Is a bar.  A historic bar, a lovely bar, perhaps, but a bar nonetheless.  In Alaska.  Where the town bar is just about the only entertainment in town at night.  If you've never slept in a room locked with a hook and eye closure above an Alaskan bar, well ... let's just say it's a unique experience.  You survey the situation.  You decide that it's in your best interest to get to know the locals before you go to bed.  You order a Diet Coke, because you don't dare order a beer.  You strike up a conversation with a mountain man and pilot who hands you his business card: it reads--I kid you not, look him up--Trigger Twigg.  You notice that people carry weapons instead of handbags.  You retire early, and you carefully lock your little hook and eye closure, inspecting the door frame, which is ... historic.

I spent most of the night sitting up in my bed, listening to the raucous laughter downstairs, wondering if one of the locals might, in their excitement, come beat down my door.

I survived, but the next morning I moved to the Talkeetna Roadhouse.  I'd originally been hesitant to go there because it was more like a hostel, with multiple bunks, but it was the only other option in town, and for a woman traveling alone, it seemed like a better choice.  It turned out that the bunk room was empty anyway, so I got my privacy.  I bolted the door that night, slept like a baby, and in the morning, I woke up to the incredible smell of baking cinnamon buns.  I think I wept for pure joy when I arrived downstairs.

I curled up on the couch with a book from their chockfull built ins, and dug into a dinner plate-sized fresh cinnamon bun with a vat of coffee to wash it down.  It was, quite possibly, the second best breakfast I'd ever eaten.

...

I set to work during N's always-too-short afternoon nap, mixing the ingredients for the dough, setting it to rise, making the filling.  By then N. was awake, and I peeked at the dough, which wasn't rising.  I realized I'd set it on the cold countertop, which wasn't warm from the sun as it usually is, and moved it closer to the stove.  After a little while longer I decided I couldn't wait, and attempted to roll out dough while she pulled on my leg: "SEE? SEE? roll, roll.  Roll, roll."
They smelled fabulous while they were baking.   They looked fabulous when they were done.  And smeared with icing?   I was determined that my son, too, would weep for joy when he arrived downstairs for breakfast.

Unfortunately, this morning, he decided that he didn't want cinnamon buns, either.  Madness, I tell you.

Can't win then all, I guess.  More for me.  Here's looking at you, Talkeetna.  I still remember you fondly.  Maybe if you read this, you'll send me your recipe for cinnamon buns.  I promise I'll guard it with my life.

What was the best breakfast you ever ate?

Cinnamon Buns
Adapted from here.  I halved the recipe and it still made eight ... though I suppose if you want to make them Alaskan size, like the Talkeetna Roadhouse did, you could get twelve from the full recipe.  Or eight, but that might be a little crazy.

1 package dry yeast
3/4 c. warm milk
1/2 c. granulated sugar
1/3 c. butter, softened
1 t. salt
2 eggs
4 c. flour

1 c. packed brown sugar
2 1/2 T. cinnamon
1/3 c. butter, melted

8 T. butter
1 1/2 c. powdered sugar
1/4 c. cream cheese
1/2 t. vanilla
1/8 t. salt

Dissolve the yeast in the warm milk in a large bowl. Add sugar, butter, salt, eggs and flour. Mix well.

Knead the dough into a large ball, using your hands dusted lightly with flour, and adding flour a little at a time if the dough is too sticky. Put in a bowl, cover and let rise in a warm place (not the countertop, like I did!) about 1 hour or until the dough had doubled in size. Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface, until it is approximately 21 inches long by 16 inches wide and 1/4-inch thick.

Preheat oven to 400F.

Combine the brown sugar and cinnamon in a bowl. Spread the melted butter over the surface of the dough, then sprinkle the brown sugar and cinnamon mixture evenly over the surface. Working carefully from the long edge, roll the dough down to the bottom edge. Cut the dough into 1 3/4-inch slices, and place on parchment on baking sheet (or in a baking pan if you don't like your rolls "free form"). Bake for 10 minutes or until light golden brown.

To make icing: While the rolls are baking, combine 8 T. butter with cream cheese. Beat well with an electric mixer until fluffy. Add sugar, vanilla, and salt, and beat again until the mixture becomes spreadable.  When the rolls are cooled, spread with icing.

You can keep these in the refrigerator and warm them up the next day in the microwave for about 15 seconds.

You Can't Go Home Again: (Not) Irish Soda Bread

Maybe it's because I live passionately.  Because when I put myself into something, I give 200%, so when it's over, it's like I've created a black hole.  Maybe it's because I am an emotional person.

Whatever it is, I have left some cities on bad terms.

In the middle of graduate school, it was LA.  I was the first in my class to take my comprehensive exams.  I prepared for them for months, nun-like in my devotion.  The day arrived; it went horribly.  I had three professors on my committee: an older conservative male writing his magnum opus, a recently tenured modernist powerhouse male, and a young feminist.  They used me as a pawn to have an argument about what was important in literature, and I didn't perform.  The end came, and I waited outside, in tears.  The feminist came out and told me that they passed me "in spite of" my performance, because they knew I was ready to advance.  I, on the other hand, knew I was ready to leave.  I haven't been back in over twelve years.

More recently, my last position.  A bad situation, after twelve years of earning accolades.  To this day, I have only driven back to that city once, and then, to its outskirts.

Until the other day.

I had occasion to go back to the city today, to campus, for a meeting.  Some consulting work, you might say.

It's a weird thing, to go back to a place like that, where you've left on bad terms.  You feel a strange longing for its familiarity; you know its secrets, its shortcuts, its back alleys.  You look for the things that have changed in your absence, surprised that it could go on without you, wishing it had all stayed the same.  And yet, at the same time, you are thankful for the emotional distance, and you still feel a little sick in the pit of your stomach, finding yourself back there.  You feel relief, passing through, knowing that this is just a visit, not a forever-stay; that this place is no longer yours.  That you know where you don't belong, and that you have somewhere else to go.  Maybe you feel defiance.  With any luck, you feel peace.

I know I can't go home again to the places I've left.  Even if I left them on better terms, I am a different person, and they've changed, too.  And that's not a bad thing.  We've created ourselves anew.

The Society for the Preservation of Irish Soda Bread (with thanks to JeCaThRe for posting that link last year) would have us all make it the way it was always made, not the way the grocery stores make it for St. Patrick's Day.  There were no eggs or sugar or raisins or baking powder in those breads.  They were brown breads, made with everyday ingredients.

But the damage has been done, and most people now think of Irish Soda Bread as that sweet cake-like bread with the raisins that you get at the bakery in March, even if it's actually Spotted Dog or Railway Cake that they're eating.

You can't go home again.  We can't turn back the clock and pretend that the name of this bread hasn't been co-opted.  But if we don't want to make plain brown bread, we can come to some middle ground, and make peace.

This isn't really Spotted Dog or Railway Cake, because it doesn't have sugar and eggs and all of the other things that make it more like cake; it may have raisins, but at least it's closer to what they had in mind over at the Society for the Preservation of Irish Soda Bread.  Hopefully my Irish friends will forgive me.

Have you ever left a city on bad terms?  Have you gone back?  Where do you fall on the Irish Soda Bread debate?

(Not) Irish Soda Bread

3 cups (12 oz) of white flour
1 cup (4 oz) of wheat flour
1 1/3 c. buttermilk (pour in a bit at a time until the dough is moist)
1 t. of salt
1 1/2 t. baking soda*
3/4 c. raisins
 * if you are cheating and using baking powder, I found that 3/4 t. baking soda and 3/4 T. baking powder will also work

Soak the raisins in warm water for 5-10 minutes; drain well.

Preheat the oven to 350F. Line a baking sheet with parchment.

Sift all of the dry ingredients into a large bowl and mix well to combine.  Add raisins and mix to coat.

Add the buttermilk to form a sticky dough. Place on floured surface and lightly knead (too much allows the gas to escape).  Shape into a round flat shape, place on parchment, and cut a cross in the top of the dough.

Bake for 45-55 minutes.  Your bread will be done when it sounds hollow if you tap it on the bottom.  Cool and serve with a generous slather of butter!