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calling the light

In the darkest night we shared warmth and light with friends old and new.   Root vegetable soup and spicy winter greens warming our bellies.  Homemade pickles and pepper jelly keeping summer at the table.  Homebrewed barley wine ready after almost a year in the making.  Handwrapped carmels.  Russian tea cakes.  Pumpkin custard.  Pomegranates.  Winter poetry and prose.   A lovely celebration.

However you may be celebrating the season, may you too find warmth, find light; and may you share it with those near and dear.

moderate sweetness

Since I can't seem to make dinner without making dessert these days, I've had a few opportunities to continue on my quest to make sweets not so sweet.  It started with strawberry jam this summer.  This weekend I made a pumpkin pie with kobocha squash -- I followed Martha's recipe and used about two-thirds the recommended sugar (and sucanat instead of actual sugar).  The results were just enough sweetness.  Unfortunately this very pie was the last thing I ate before last month's stomach flu, and the memory did not serve me right.  Fortunately I had the occasion to make another fancy dessert, just two days later.

The Ginger-Pear Upside Down Cake mentioned recently by Molly is good.  Really good.  Even with half the called-for sugar (again, I used sucanat) in the topping, and two-thirds of the molasses and sugar in the cake.  When I make it again, I'll double the ginger.  This girl likes a bit more zing.  And, I'll be sure to plan on spending the time the cake is baking cleaning the kitchen, since, as with most of Molly's baked recipes, I end up completely trashing the kitchen in the process of the making.  Well okay, I should just admit that making a mess is an integral part of any of my making. 

on the mind

I have a tendency to over-think everything.  When it comes to making things I often spend more time in my head than I do with my hands.  Even with easy stuff.  Like the sweater that the wee one has been wearing in pieces lately because she's excited about it; meanwhile her mama can only think about actually stitching the sleeves to the body.  And there are those two simple holiday gifts I'm working on (still all in my head, mind you) for nana and great nana, which will undoubtedly be delivered into their hands well into next week.  And the solstice cards.  These are finally on paper thanks tonight's intensive gocco session, but they've morphed into a new year's greeting. 

I'm thinking seriously about resolving in the new year to not let things get stuck in the gray matter, but instead to make a practice of getting them out, of making them real.  I'm wondering if getting back to Julia Cameron's morning pages would help.  Or maybe making a trusty little notebook a constant companion, into which I could jot ideas and notions into as they came to me.  Of course I'm all still completely in my head about how to get out...  So the question for you, friends, is do you have a practice that keeps you moving from the mental to the physical realm, that helps you kick-start your ideas and bring them to fruition?

tomatillo gifts

A tomatillo has the nicest wrapping.  A star shaped husk of light green swaddles the tartest of green orbs; fruits known by me to make the simplest of foods sparkle.  Tonight I made up a spicy tomatillo salsa to slather upon wild mushroom tamales.  In the morning it will surely dress up the scrambled eggs.   It's good too with beans and rice, with chicken and cheese enchiladas, with poached eggs and tortillas...

I think I need to figure out a way to preserve this goodness.  I'm sure it's as simple as canning tomatoes since the fruits are so acidic, but my trusty preserving bible doesn't say much about the tomatillo.  The salsa would make a great gift for those who like a bit of spice.  And, wouldn't you love to have a shelf in your pantry lined with these jars of prettiness?  Maybe next year... for now it's one batch at a time.  Here's the recipe:

Tomatillo Salsa, adapted from Mark Miller, Stephan Pyles & John Sedlar's Tamales

30 tomatillos, husked, washed, blackened (stick them under the broiler until the skins start to blister and pop), and chopped
3 cloves of garlic, roasted (stick them on the broiler pan with the tomatillos for a few minutes)
1 bunch of chopped cilantro
3 chiles in adobo sauce, plus 1 1/2 tablespoons of adobo sauce (yes, it's that stuff in can... use more or less to control the heat)
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon sugar

Whirl all of the ingredients in the food processor until it's not too chunky, but not too smooth.  The little one pushed the pulse button with glee about ten times.  It was just the right amount of whirling.  Yields about 3 cups. 

As they say at Cafe Pasqual's in Santa Fe, the place I learned to appreciate the tomatillo, panza llena, corazon contento (full belly, happy heart).  Enjoy!

moon watching

Live in the high mountain desert for a stretch, and you'll become fast friends with the moon.  It's hard to go a day without experiencing at least a sliver of the orb in a place where a cloud rarely obstructs the sky and the horizon stretches on and on and on.  Live on the edge of a vast lake that weaves blankets of cloud and fog across the sky, and you'll go for days, even weeks without catching a glimpse of the moon.

Since leaving the desert, I've kept a lunar calendar on my refrigerator.  Each year the same simple calendar -- a card, actually -- serves as a reminder of the moon's whereabouts on all of those days of cloud cover.  These thirteen lunar cycles condensed onto a page have been a bit of a touchstone, keeping me connected to the rhythms around me.

Last week I happened upon Alec Thibodeau's lunar calendar over at Tiny Showcase.  This amazing letterpressed piece made my heart quicken.  It made my cheeks flush.  You must look at the detail.  When I realized the print run had sold out I was crushed.   I've thought of that piece everyday since, feeling as if the plain little black-and-white card that has marked the moon all these years would no longer suffice.  Then I saw the moon tonight as I left work.  A just past new moon silver sliver hanging just above the horizon.  It became immediately clear that while there's surely magic in Alec's calendar, the real magic is to be found in the sky.  And I knew I'd be just fine.

littlest knits

I recently finished up a tiny little sweater for Ana's babe, who is due to come into this world in the next few days.  As I sized it up to my wee one I realized exactly how much she's grown, how much she's changed, how fleeting these last twenty months have been.  It is too easy to forget exactly how small she once was.  How her foot didn't come close to spanning my opened palm.  How her littlest toenail was but a speck.  How her entire body fit within the crook of my arm.  I can look at photos and see the changes, but watching her wrestle a bear into a sweater that would have swallowed her in those first months I know these changes.  My oh my, where did my baby go? 

Okay, back to the sweater that was supposed to be the subject matter here... it's a little bolero from One Skein knit up with Henry's Attic Organic Inca Cotton, colorgrown in sage.  According to folklore, the small eyelet detail on the back brings the wearer protection and good luck.  I wasn't sure how the eyelet would come out with the thick and thin nature of the yarn, but I like it.  The thick, the thin, the symmetry of the detail skewed a bit here and there and everywhere.  A bit like life with a newborn.  Like life with a toddler.  Like life all around.  Perfect, I think, for the celebrating of a new babe.

lake effect

Before the big lake freezes each winter there seems to be a stretch where it serves as a giant snow-maker.  Cold water, colder air and driving winds whip up a frenzy of frozen precipitation that comes without warning.  There has been plenty of forecasted snow this week with back to back storms dumping over two feet; but the lake effect snow that has been falling intermittently is providing a continual fresh coat of powder. 

I'm itching to get out and play -- the first storm found me in bed with a stomach flu while the second caught me on the road stretching my two hour drive into a white-knuckled five hour trek.   And those flurries in between have only made for more shoveling, sweeping and stomping of boots.  But tomorrow will be the first real day of the snow season for me.  The first day to get out and play.  Snow shoes?  Skis?  Sleds?  Snow angels?  Oh, the possibilities...