Caveat Emptor

Inspired by Searching for our Silver Lining's post about putting her home on the market.

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Caveat emptor:

You will need to check the raspberries in early July.  I know the bushes are prickly, but please pick them daily; don't let the birds get those two quarts.  I worked too hard for that, pruning the canes each year, the tiny thorns stuck in my skin. I have a recipe for fresh raspberry pie if you need it.

About the hydrangeas.  I know they look dead right now.  They've come and gone these ten years (we coaxed them to bloom the first year we moved in); perhaps they're in mourning for us.  They came too early this year, with the warm spring, and were taken by surprise by the cold snap in March.  You might want to leave them be, in case they come around in the end.

I know that you're planning to live mostly on one floor, but I hope you'll take a shower upstairs every once in a while, where you can look out the window and see the barn bathed in early morning sunlight. I'll make sure it sparkles for you before we leave.

I hope you don't mind my forwardness, but the best place for your couch is near the window in the living room.  The breezes are calming at night, and you'll be able to look outside, sitting sideways, and hear the sounds of people enjoying summer at the pool. If you're not feeling well, the sounds will lull you to sleep.

Are you bringing some chairs for the front porch? It's the best place to watch thunderstorms and the 5K races on Thanksgiving and in June. I recommend a rocking chair.  It's an old porch.

While we're on the subject of porches: please plan to buy at least ten bags of candy for Halloween.  There will be about 300 children who come to your door, and I don't want to disappoint them.

I hope you like the neighbors.  Feel free to ask to borrow an egg or some aluminum foil, like we did on the day we moved in. Maybe they'll tell you about the time I won an ice cream block party from Edy's for an essay I wrote about my community, and we all sat out under the tree between your driveway and your neighbors' driveway, with tubs and tubs of ice cream they shipped to us in styrofoam containers with dry ice.

And one last thing: there may be ghosts.  They're quiet, mostly, but you may hear them at night, unfulfilled dreams, children that never saw this world.  Be kind to them.  Speak softly to them.  They shouldn't trouble you; they're looking for me.  You can tell them where we've gone.

Take care of this home, with its patches in the drywall, with its spiders in the basement, with its letters scratched in the concrete foundation. It's been here a long time.  I promise it will take care of you.

with love,
Justine

Microblog Monday: Honey Gone Nuts Granola

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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I have been stress eating.

The house needs to be packed up, but we can't pack it up much more because we're living in it.  Students are still having crises.  Our summer vacation plans, meager as they were, have been blown up bit by bit by other commitments: to family reunions, to orientation at my son's new school, to work responsibilities that have cropped up in the middle of July and August that require me to be there when I thought I'd get a week off.  My commute, long though it may be now, when shortened will no longer take me past the fields of horses and cows and alpacas I've grown to love. It's been a long, long time since we took more than a few days' vacation, and it's starting to wear on me.

Mel posted about craving this morning, about how it's not about the food we want but about the experience connected to the food that we're trying to recreate.  In my case, though, I disagree: I think it's purely chemical. Sometimes I crave chocolate cake, and in my more desperate endorphin-seeking moments I make chocolate mug cake.  It's not beautiful, but it serves the purpose.

I've also, oddly, been craving granola.  I used to make cranberry ginger granola, mostly in the winter for Christmas, but two years ago my blogger friend Ilene opened her store Hippie Chick Granola Co., and I rarely bother to make my own any more, because hers was even better, even if I did have to ship it from North Carolina.  Besides, I like supporting a small woman-owned business. And I wanted to order some the other night, but Ilene was in Raleigh pitching to Shark Tank, and even if she were at her ovens in Oak Island, I couldn't get it fast enough.

Kimberly, the baker at my beloved coffee shop (she takes orders) also makes fabulous granola (come to think of it, Ilene and Kimberly would get along very well). Truth be told, I hardly ever buy coffee at the coffee shop; Kimberly also makes the best scones and cake and yeast doughnuts that don't come out of my oven. They sell their granola with yogurt and fresh fruit in a cup that is just the right size to stick in my cupholder so I can eat as I drive to work.  Sadly, this breakfast of the gods costs $4, so it's not an everyday occurrence.

So I bit the bullet, went to the grocery store, channeled Ilene and Kimberly, and hoped for the best.  Both of them taught me (by taste, more than anything else) that salt is key. And that you should dial back on the oats. And that you shouldn't oversweeten your granola.  And that olive oil makes for a light, crispy, even nuttier crunch.

Though I'm sure that I'll still be buying Kimberly's and Ilene's granola, because they are far more talented bakers than I could ever hope to be, the results were satisfactory.  I've been snacking on it since it came out of the oven, and this morning, I heaped it over greek yogurt and apricots, and drove to work with my own container in the cupholder, admiring the fields of buttercups where horses grazed, trying to let the knots in my shoulders go.

Salted Honey Gone Nuts Granola

1 c. hazelnuts, coarsely chopped
1 c. almonds, slivered
1 c. cashews, coarsely chopped
1 c. unsweetened coconut flakes
2 c. oats
generous grind of sea salt (yes, you really need sea salt)
4 1/2 T. olive oil
3 T. honey (or 1 1/2 - 2 T. agave for your vegans out there or people watching your g.i.)

Preheat oven to 350.  Prepare a metal sheet pan by lining it with aluminum foil, lightly oiled.

Mix all of the dry ingredients together with your hands.  Add the honey and oil, toss well to coat.

Pour onto prepared baking sheet and bake for about 20 minutes, until lightly browned, and cool for a while on the pan, until your self-restraint has evaporated and you must eat some.

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.

Something Old, Something New: Rye Brownies

"A place for everything, and everything in its place," my father was fond of saying.  He was a master of organization.  Or at least, he strove to be one.  He was certainly more type A than my mother, who claimed to have places for things in piles on the dining room table.

I hear that voice in my head as I've started to bring things, little things, to our new house.  We're only moving 20 minutes away, so it shouldn't be a big deal, but on the other hand, the world is slowly tilting upside down.  Where will the cups go?  The plates?  How do these old things fit into this new (larger, but differently configured) space?

There is a closet that I know is right for a roasting pan, a footed cake server, our assortment of lesser-used small appliances.  There is only one really right space for dishes, so the silverware (it seems to me) goes in the drawer beneath them.  The mugs and glasses go on either side of the stove, and close to the sink.

And of course, the smaller questions mirror the bigger ones.  How will we fit, this old configuration into a new place?

Something old, something new.  A place for everything, and everything in its place.

It's a strange process, this imposition of order.  Every day the old house becomes imperceptibly less full.  Every day I live, for a few minutes, anyway, in the new house.

Someday, maybe it won't seem so new anymore; it will just be our house.

Rye Brownies
I've been making homemade brownies since grad school, when I realized how easy it was to melt chocolate and butter together.  When I started seeing recipes for rye brownies in my feed, I rolled my eyes.  Could they be better?  And yet, there's something appealing about them.  Earthy, chewy moist.  Something old, and yet also something new.

11 T. unsalted butter, cut into 1/2" cubes, more for greasing pan
10 ½ oz. bittersweet chocolate (60 to 70% cocoa), chopped
1 ½ c. rye flour
½ c. unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
½ t. baking powder
1 t. salt
4 large eggs
1 c. sugar
1 c. light brown sugar
1 T. vanilla

Heat oven to 350 and grease a 9x13" baking pan.

In the microwave, on half power, melt the butter and chocolate, stirring ever minute or so with a heatproof rubber spatula. Let cool.

In a separate bowl, whisk together rye flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt.

Beat eggs, granulated and brown sugars and vanilla until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Beat in melted chocolate mixture until smooth. Beat in flour mixture.

Transfer batter to prepared pan (it will be quite thick, not even really pourable) and smooth the top. Sprinkle with sea salt, if you like that sort of thing, and bake until brownies are mostly firm, but the tester still comes out with wet crumbs, about 25 minutes. Let cool completely before cutting into squares. Serve or freeze.