Author: TadMack

Says: “Behold! A weak bit of sun returns!”

Thinks: MAN, who knew it was so SERIOUSLY dusty in here???

Crud.

And does this look like a scone to you? Why, no, it does not. Why, you may ask, would one even think that flat-but-lightweight-cookie-looking-thing might be a scone? Because the recipe is awfully close to being the same.

Once upon a time in the Wilds of Childhood, T’s father used to make something he called Tea Cakes. Now, he only made them for Special Occasional or High Holy Days wherein people came over after church, and he needed to Impress Them. (He also used to make his special Parker House Rolls on these occasions as well.) Sadly, he somehow “forgot” the recipe in the intervening years wherein his daughters begged most piteously for these details. (It really is a shame, the loss of memory occurring these days in sixty-four year old men who don’t want to be called on to bake anything.) (Fortunately, the Parker House Roll recipe is in a cookbook and cannot so easily be expunged from memory.) Artful daughter then turned to her friend Google for help. While taking the “advice” of the myriad recipes to be found online would have been easy, T thought she’d first take a stab at reverse engineering the recipe from taste memory. (Yeah, that was going to work. The taste memory is from over twenty years ago…)

The trick about Southern foods – for the Tea Cake is One Of Those Southern Things from T’s father’s childhood – is that many of them were beget by the British. (As was the amusing — solely in retrospect, to be sure — habit T’s father had of saying, “I say!” at the end of his more infuriated repeated requests) In her quest to recreate the airy, sweet cakes, she polluted a scone recipe with a little more moisture than was called for, and more baking powder. The addition of dried cranberries and peel probably didn’t help with the “traditional” taste she was after, but without them the cakes would have seemed quite bland.

The original cakes of T’s childhood were leavened with baking soda, and had that specific bicarbonate bite to them — but they were also plenty sweet. For some reason cream of tartar as an ingredient comes to mind… buttermilk (because isn’t that in every Southern food?), and plenty of butter…

Long story short: these things, though good they are not IT. And so the search continues. Thoughts? Suggestions? Anyone else ever had a Southern Tea Cake? (Mom?)

Canning is the harvest, distilled. A jar of rich golden jelly holds within it the warmth of the sun on the grapes, the stickiness of juice on the hands, the heat of the kitchen, and the perfection of a single day, captured and sealed in glass.

Most of us consume our preserves without this much ceremony, but today we chose to take a moment of reflection. Today, we opened a jar of jam we’ve been saving for a little over a year. On the day when the Columbard grapes were picked for this jam, the first golden days of autumn had passed, and the deep nights were just becoming slightly brisk. Our friend who picked the grapes had spent the morning with her daughter and sister, and spent the afternoon putting up the fruit as fast as she could — mainly to keep her daughter from eating the rest of the grapes before they could be preserved. Perhaps that night she marinated steaks at her husband’s request, and brought out an array of ice creams to round out his favored meal of steak and potatoes. It was, in all likelihood, another warm, beautiful day in their lives, like so many that had gone before; not worried over or clutched too tightly, but allowed to pass through open, grateful hands, as the days which would come after.

It was a day when the family was whole, and when they knew they loved each other. It was, because of this, a perfect day.

Canning is the perfect distillation of the harvest — a stop-motion snapshot of the sweetness of bright skies and golden sun, the sound of birdsong and jokes, the honest ache of working muscles and sweat-dampened foreheads. Today a spoonful of jam brings back the echo of memory, to which we say hail and farewell — and enjoy again the essential sweetness of a life well-lived.

After a brief detour into the forties (or 7°C), the twenties (-4°C) and the ice are back, and have brought with them the deep, clinging fog, the thickness of which makes it almost impossible to see across the street. It is RIDICULOUS out there, but that’s just another typical winter day in Glasgow. Meanwhile, we strive to entertain ourselves, now that for us, at least the worst has passed. We are back to eight hours of “daylight.” It seems that we are sensitive to darkness in that we are sluggish when it dips below that amount… but now, we’re a bit more alert. And it’s a good thing.

We keep a running list of Scots words… well, really, they’re English words, and they’re “bad” words (because isn’t that what most people learn first when they’re in another country?) – or at least questionable words. These are mainly usage words which we stumble across in our conversations with the natives. Since our friend Mary’s interaction with it, we’ve been listening for the contemptuous phrase, “what are you like?” and we’ve heard “what are they like,” which made us happy, since the scorn wasn’t directed toward us! We also now know, for example, that when you call someone a “wee nyaff,” you are referring to them as that most hated of insects — a midge (or “midgie,” as they’re called here – apparently a midge is a garbage man in some parts) or a mosquito. So, a wee nyaff — knee-aff — is a pernicious pest. We also are a bit shocked — and amused, really — to learn that a “muppet” is not an innocent creature of Jim Henson wizardry. Och, nae — it’s a useless, stupid person who can’t seem to manage without the hand of another, er… making all of its movements…! That puts Miss Piggy in a whole new light, doesn’t it?

We dragged ourselves back to chorus last week to begin rehearsal for our last two concerts of the year. We began with Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle — which always sounds to us like a “little mess,” and, frankly, it is right now. (But, the title really means a little solemn mass.) It’s only a little messy, though, and we’re surprised at how good we sound. It’s challenging, but it has fugues, which make musical sense, and are not as hard as they sound, once you learn them and get up to speed. As the concert is in March, we’ll have to fast-forward our learning; the ranks are rather thin right now, as many people are still in the grip of the five-day-‘flu going around. (It has managed to miss T. entirely, which makes her nervous — she’s not sure why she’s so blessed!) However, since there are seven — SEVEN — soloists in the piece, there’s actually not that much for the chorus to do.

Meanwhile we are wading through sight-reading Vaughn Williams’ Toward the Unknown Region, which is a fun one for the Americans, as it’s the words of a Walt Whitman poem (yay!) set to some really …unique 20’s era music. (Vaughn Williams is an acquired taste for many; “modern” music from the 1920’s tends to be full of clashing notes.) We’ll begin learning Belshazzar’s Feast, another “modern” piece, written in 1931, for our final official concert of the year. “Unofficial” concerts continue throughout the summer months, with short programs of “choral classics.”

The idea of choral classics is always a funny thing for us, as the songs which “everybody knows” and are classics to our Scottish friends are usually something we have to sight read and learn as fast as we can. (Can YOU belt out Verdi’s Va Pensiero practically from memory? How about Hubert Parry’s I Was Glad? THEY can. It’s kind of annoying.) Which begs the question, what’s an American choral “classic?” What are the songs that “everybody knows?” (Other than patriotic songs and Old MacDonald… which we’ve been informed is technically Scottish…) It’s such a big country, we can hardly say that there ARE songs “everybody” knows in all fifty states… which is yet another difference between the UK and the U.S.. Our choral “classics” must be more regional…?

Days of bone-deep cold, when the fog doesn’t lift, mean that we’re not too keen to go out. D’s finally finishing a bout of “the dreaded lurgi,” as the ‘flu is called here, and the cold air just aggravates his coughing. Usually times like these mean it’s time for hot baths, and languishing in the suds.

Well, it WOULD mean that. But, Glasgow has a wee problem with insulation — since our waste pipe froze and forced water back into all the flats, it’s obvious that the pipes aren’t insulated to counteract the cold. What does this mean? Tepid showers. Baths where one has to run the kettle and fill the largest (non-canning) pot a few times to “help” fill the tub. Very short prep time in the morning, as one does the basics of washing within a four or five minute period, and leaps forth from the shower with a quickness. We shake our heads at the whole thing, but then we ARE saving water, we suppose… it’s very green to take three minute showers. Right?? RIGHT???

To comfort ourselves at the lack of hot baths (at home, at least; the pool has insulated everything, so their showers can boil the skin from the body) we took time to resurrect the lovely Bad SciFi Night movie marathon, but this time we added our own twist. It was Bad Disney Flicks — and we had a good time making fun of movies that were filmed in Glorious Technicolor years before we were born, and have their own five flavors of bad. While we do love our Hayley Mills, OY, is That Darn Cat an awful, horrific and tiresome movie. Can’t reason why, but it is somehow cathartic to groan and roll one’s eyes at the stupid characters. (This explains the success of many, many movies…) Somehow, The Snowball Express has held up through seeing it at years of church socials and Family Fun Nights, and of course The Parent Trap – the Lohan-free original – remains forever as a favorite. (We’re withholding judgment on Moonspinners until next weekend when we finish it. Maybe now we’ll move onto Bad Westerns, and break out the John Wayne… Or not.)

This reminds us of that dreadful parable of The House With the Golden Windows.

Gray Day…./Everything is gray./I watch./But nothing moves today.

While this picture is charming and actually shows white snow, GRAY is the predominant color of a Glaswegian winter. Gray, and black, with speckles of grungy white, which is itself a shade of dingy gray. These are the colors of old snow, filthy sidewalks, and much of the wardrobe of this city. Lacking the blessing of light, most people revert to a spectrum they can actually see, which is black, white, and gray.

But when my days/Are Happy Pink/It’s great to jump/ And just not think.

It’s enough to drive a body ’round the twist. We LOVE color. We adore color. We buy strange shades of bedding (it’s what goes on sale first – people like “normal” colors, so we take the weird ones) and drench our sheets in dye color. T., when doing dye loads, usually tosses in some t-shirts and underclothes for a little livening. It’s hard to be unhappy wearing green tie-dyed underpants. At the very least, it’s hard to not feel the urge to wear neon shades, the more blacks and gray people wear.

On Bright Red Days/ how good it feels/to be a horse/and kick my heels!

Of course, sometimes even our color cheerleading fails. This winter has so far been filled with emotional upsets — we’ve grieved through classmates’ suicides, cancers, car crash fatalities, and seen the marriages of two very dear friends begin to dissolve. Sometimes, it all seems a bit much, and the dank winter gray seeps in. We had to fall down for awhile last week, and just lay where we’d landed. Sometimes… sometimes, acknowledging the ick just seems to be a necessity.

However, even in the midst of our grim days, we are inadvertently adding color to our internal landscapes, at least — without much effort or conscious thought. In the quest to be healthy, we are eating really colorful foods.

Green Days/Deep deep in the sea./Cool and quiet fish/That’s me.

Red lentil curry with chunks of “chicken,” chopped ginger, fragrant coconut milk, and a fiery array of jalapeño chiles. It’s lovely and bright and D. served it in his small bread boules. Tasty. Wilted greens, steamed broccoli, carrot discs and bright red bell pepper confetti brightened a bed of rice noodles and spicy “beef” strips.

Then comes a Yellow Day and Wheeee! I am a busy, buzzy bee.

In honor of our color quest, T. whipped up another batch of sugar cookies to pass along (and eat herself) and colored the glaze with saffron and boiling water. Beautifully golden fish with silver eyes — and the last sugar cookies she’ll be making for some time, for though she thought she hated sugar cookies, she has modified an already excellent recipe and now these things are Becoming A Problem. But never mind – they’re colorful and bright and pretty, and the perfect thing to pass to friends to liven up their gray days.

Especially to those of you who are also stumbling a bit in your walk through the world: May an epiphany of color and light brighten your days; may you find light in the dark, and joy in the common, every day things.

Dr. Seuss wrote My Many Colored Days in 1973 and it was published posthumously in 1996. He wasn’t finished with it yet, so you can see it lacks his usual talent, but it was nice to get one more book of his anyway.

T’s mother used to make greens every New Year’s day. Occasionally she even made black-eyed peas. These were the foods she’d eaten every New Year’s Day as a child, because her mother followed that strangest of Southern traditions, and made her children something called “hoppin’ john.” Southerners eat black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day to attract luck, and they eat greens, so that money will come in the New Year.

Obviously, this worked for T’s family. That — or continuing to go to work — ensured that they have never yet gone bankrupt and become destitute and homeless.

T., however, is not a huge proponent of the New Year’s Day scenario. First, she knows that D. really hates cooked veg, especially greens — and while she loves them, a.) most of them don’t love her, seeing as they’re high in oxalic acid, and b.) there’s not much point cooking anything for one person that the other won’t eat. Another reason for avoidance is, if T. stays up ’til midnight, her body figures it’s time to eat again — and she’s just not eating greens at midnight, no matter how tasty they might be. A New Year’s Day celebration meal that comes in the middle of the night calls for pancakes. Silver dollar pancakes, to be sure — for the money attractant aspect of things. And syrup — a lovely bitter orange syrup made of the leftover simple syrup from candying oranges — makes the perfect representative food of love.

So, we expect love and money in the New Year. And, you know, to still be trying to be healthy, since that’s obviously what the puddle of earnest and healthful margarine represents. (It’d be a whole ‘nother story if that were butter.)

But what, you ask, about the black-eyed peas?

Welllll, D. kind of hates those, too. Or, rather, he did. And actually, T. wasn’t so fond of the dried kind — until she remembered — or misremembered? — a dish of them she enjoyed in childhood, made by some Jamaican friends. T. did a little experimenting, and came up with a good first try at the dish, and we both actually enjoyed it — which is a good thing. Black-eyed peas are cheap (thus explaining the frugal Southerners serving them), and fiber-full, which is probably a good thing the usual meal of four calling birds, three French hens, two turtledoves and a neighborhood of gingerbread houses that most people eat for Christmas dinner, and continue to snack on throughout the week between the 25th and New Year’s Day. Not to mention the fudge…

This is a rough guess at what we did to make this dish — and keep in mind, it’s a work in progress!

Misremembered Peas & Rice

• 2 c. black-eyed peas – sorted and soaked
• About 8 C. water
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 2 spring onions, bruised and 2 Tbsp. onion powder
• 1 tsp. salt, and of freshly ground black pepper
• 2 fresh sprigs of thyme, bruised, or 2 tsp. dried
• 1/4 tsp. paprika, and ginger
• 1 C. rice
• 1 can coconut milk
• 1 whole hot pepper, like Scotch Bonnet or a Thai chile, optional

First, sort your beans — this is imperative. This time of year, the only black-eyed peas you’ll find are dried and harvested peas, and the harvesting process inevitably brings along little rocks. Measure out your two cups, pour them a bit at a time on a flat surface, and pick through them. It’s a chore myriad Southern children spent many an evening doing…
Soak your beans in water in a covered pot overnight. For some people, black-eyed peas cause more gastrointestinal distress than other beans, and soaking them overnight and tossing out the water helps with that. If you haven’t time for a whole overnight thing, pour your beans into boiling water, boil for two minutes, and then allow to sit for one hour. Discard the water, and Bob’s your uncle. And Bob might not have a gassy stomach, which would benefit your familial relationship greatly.

Next, smash your garlic cloves with the flat of your knife, into a paste, and add to the 8 cups of boiling water. Add the drained beans and simmer for an hour to an hour and a half, depending on how old your beans were to begin with, and how high of an altitude you’re at — beans can be tricky, but most of them give up the ghost after an hour. Simply do a “squish test” against the lid of the pot. You want your black-eyed peas to have give, but not be completely mush, so do check on that simmer at the hour mark!
Then, add your coconut milk, rice, salt, black pepper, onion powder, paprika, ginger, and spring onions (or scallions) and thyme to the mix. Please note that the aromatics are beaten and bruised with the flat of your knife, not chopped, according to the visual of the finished dish that T. retains from when her friends made it. (Mind you, T. never lets anything like the way one is supposed to do things stop her, and she chopped a plain old onion into hers, but she practically made a paste of it, and sweated it before she added it to the beans, so it was invisible — but then, she has a THING about adding onions to savory foods. Ignore her. Carry on.) At this time, if you’d like your dish to be slightly spicy, toss in your whole hot pepper – don’t chop it! Simply boiling it in the coconut milk and the juices from the beans will impart a “glow” to the dish that non-pepper lovers will even enjoy.

The rice should be cooked through in forty minutes — keep an eye on the dish at this stage, and don’t hesitate to add a teensy bit more water (no more than a quarter cup), if your bean juice is quite thick and you feel there’s not enough liquid to adequately cook the rice. Remove your bedraggled veg matter – pepper, thyme and onions — and serve with a dusting of thyme and pepper to taste.

The reason this is called Misremembered Peas & Rice — is because the dish actually calls for kidney beans! T. swears she had it with black-eyed peas, but she may have recalled one of her mother’s experiments and not Mrs. Shand’s dish. Either way – it’s a creamy, tasty, yummy dish, with just a hint of coconut scent, and a subtle fire — and a good way to get down those black-eyed peas, even if you’re not fond of them.

And why should you be trying so hard to eat them? Because 1 cup (172g) plain cooked black-eyed peas is only 199 calories, 35g of carbohydrate (11% of the American recommended daily allowance), 11g of fiber (44% RDA) and 13g of protein, which is rare in beans (And ½ cup of cooked black-eyed peas counts as 1 oz. of lean meat from the Meat, Poultry, Fish, Dry Beans, Eggs, And Nuts Group of the Food Guide Pyramid.). Plus, they’re pretty tasty. Even if they’re not the bean you were supposed to use.