GUEST BLOGGER

Caro just did a cooking demo for a group of her friends, and I went along to take pictures and play sous chef. Several other people brought dishes of their own, or made them there---one, a very nice sushi-making lesson---and we had a terrific meal.

So, tomorrow, we'll have a Guest Blogger---Caro will do the post, with pictures of her terrific food.

It's now 11:11 p.m., the most magical moment of the clock, and I wish you sweet sleep, a happy wakening, a lovely day or a wonderful night, whichever applies where you are.

ALONE IN A CROWD

Painting by Dear M. Matisse

We went out to dinner tonight, to a small, really good-food place which serves Whole Catfish on weekends. Chris is inordinately fond of catfish, hence the capitalization above, and one of his favorite “second-hand” meals is the second two of the four smoked catfish he does on the grill every couple of weeks.

He has the first two warm, as they come off the grill, usually with grilled vegetables and some Pink Sauce---the mayo/ketchup/lime juice/sprinkle of S&L, his own alternative to Tartar Sauce.

Then, two nights later, I know what he’s having for supper: the Second Two, ditto Pink Sauce, while I have a quickly-stirred up bit of tuna salad---easy meal; I usually make a quick gratin of something, to offset the cold fish. He also likes it as a salad: the fish removed from the bone, and hand-crumbled into neat bite-sized pieces, then combined with thin-sliced celery and chopped boiled egg, then tossed with a little of the sauce with a bit of horseradish added, for a nice remoulade. Piled onto lettuce on a plate and surrounded with tomato wedges, a bit of lemon, and perhaps some egg quarters, it makes a lovely dish. Just not one I’d care to eat.

Anyway, we got into the restaurant, which is seat-yourself. He stopped in the lobby a moment, while I picked a table right in the corner by the door, and stood waiting. After a moment, I saw the “Reserved” card sitting there, so we went looking for another. There seemed to be nothing left except six-tops, so we went back to a forlorn little table, also by the door, which, though it would seat three, had only one place setting.

He sat at the cover-spot, and I sat down to the bare tablecloth. And I did notice as I looked around as we waited for our person---we didn’t go to eat until perhaps 7:30, and I suppose they had seated all the tables once, and re-set them hurriedly to keep up with the crowd. The tablecloths, even on tables for six and eight, had been tossed on sorta lap-scally all around the room, so that some swayed WAY down into a diner’s lap, whilst their companions across the way were practically eating off the bare boards. Dali would have loved sitting in that room---some tables had that one-corner-uncovered effect of so many modern magazines, and others were bunched up so that the salt and pepper sat sorta sidesaddle.

While we awaited our person, the young woman clearing the next table took our iced-tea orders, and said someone would soon be with us. She brought the tea, and no one ever brought anything else---not one thing, the entire night. It was serve-yourself, so we did, and when we sat down, Chris got up and retrieved me a place setting from the “Reserved” table, which was the only un-populated one in the area.

A young woman scampered up to him. “Is this YOUR table, Sir?” When he said “No,” she walked away, and we could hear her telling another table of diners of our egregious trespass---we distinctly heard the words “silverware” and “Reserved,” as if we'd disturbed the sanctity of some holy altar. When she came back with a fresh cover, she mentioned it again, to SOME MORE PEOPLE, then muttered to herself, three feet from us, for the whole time it took her to lay down napkin, knife, fork, spoon. It was like eating on a second-grade playground.

Y’all, I wished I felt embarrassed, but I hope they knew we weren’t getting any help from anywhere else. We got our salads, we ate; we got our dinner and ate, ( lovely crisp Panko shrimp, home-style snap beans with ham chunks, cooked down LOW, some fresh-steamed broccoli just at its perfect moment) And the used plates and silver and empty glasses just accumulated and sat there. I'm WAY not above clearing my own table, or moving things myself if there's an empty spot nearby, but there was nowhere to put the stuff, and nobody came near us.

When we went to get our dessert (a huge tall pie safe, and you help yourself---tonight there was Karo Pecan, Lemon Chess, and Brownie Pie---You see why we did not take the little bumps in the road too seriously, but then we’re not really complainers, and have never sent anything back, unless it was WAY undercooked)---the dishes still sat there when we returned.

From our little table in Coventry, we watched diners get refills, (We HAD ordered a pitcher of tea, so there WAS that) and eat and get cleared, sit back and converse, then go for a leisurely dessert---we sorta did all the leisure part, but it’s like we were alone in the room. And you know, we really didn’t care about any of it---we were together, we had a good dinner, and aside from getting grumped at and tattled on, we did just fine.

And the kicker: A party of four passed our table, having had their dinner farther back in the room. One of the ladies stopped at the still-pristine “Reserved” table. “Look,” she said, “HERE’S our RESERVED table that they couldn’t find.” And she picked up the little card and walked out with it.

When we finished, we waited in vain for someone to come back into the room full of people---neither the nice lady who got our tea, nor the scoldy one returned, and so Chris went out to the cashier in the lobby, who headed for the kitchen.

We envisioned the scenario to be like this: She asked, “I need the check for Table X---whose table is that?” Everyone disclaimed the poor orphaned thing, so she realized that no one had paid any attention to us, went out to her lobby stand, printed us out a check, and came back, saying, “I’m so sorry; I printed this out for one dinner only---I hope that’s all right.”

And so we accepted it. And we left a dollar on the table---I have no idea which one retrieved it, and I wonder if they even found it, amongst all the dishes---I also wonder if they counted the silver and made sure I'd left the purloined napkin.

KEEPER OF THE NEST

All pictures from the Internet

Lawn Tea is being honored today with a link-up with Jeanne at http://backyardneighbor.typepad.com/backyard_neighbor/. I've enjoyed her blog for quite some time now, and really appreciate that she'd like to introduce us to her readers.

Thank you, Jeanne!

It's also Vintage Thursday, and though I have no pictures this time of any of my vintage items, I have been musing upon how our enjoyment of collecting things we love, and our instinctive love for decorating and keeping and making our homes pleasant and welcoming may have begun.

I am the Keeper of a Nest. I just read that concept, in those four little words, on Dear Daisy Cottage, and it was just as if I saw our home and my role in it in a slightly different way. I’ve been pondering that new idea---an idea as old as old can be, from the first fur-huddled families coping with the dark and cold in whatever sheltering cave they could lay bloody claim to.

In the great ages since then, this nesting thing has grown and grown; wars have been fought, and territories seized; lives have been staked and lost; castles and hovels and sheds have all been refuges from the same dark and cold.

And we, the Keepers, have padded these nests with the comforts we could afford or find or make or, in earlier, bleaker times, wrest from weaker nesters. As long as the WE of us were taken care of, the driving, surviving force in us left others outside our own fold to fend for themselves. Cloth and feathers for easing our rest, and chink-mud to keep out the elements; a floor and walls and the thatching for the rain; pots to cook in, water to drink, water to bathe----everything encountered, I think, was looked at as a measure to improve the comfort and well-being of the family.

I try to think of the heart and mind of the first nester to pick a flower, take it into the abode, and place it in a vessel formerly used only for practical purposes. And when that first blossom went into that first humble cup, something in the world clicked into a different place. We saw that our hands could create and provide not only comfort and necessities, but something beautiful, no matter how small or hard-won. I think it's part of our nature to crave something pretty to enhance our worlds.

I think of my own forebears---especially those women of the Scottish Highlands. The centuries of deprivation and hunger and cold, the waiting for the men’s return from battle, the dread of loss, of starvation, of eking out that last scatter of oats or mutton-fat into a meager bowl for their families. That sharp, chilling wind and the sparse landscape, with nothing between it and their clan but their own courage and work. How they must have waited and wept, with hope fragile as life, and despair as their daily bread. And what WAS beautiful in their lives? Did they just stand looking at the sunrises and sunsets, or the hills with their fleeting purple haze?

We went to see; we rode and walked those hills of the Highlands, and the great spaces and crags and rust-hued rocky expanses are still there, looming and forbidding, their only beauty the blush of purplish heather in the Spring and perhaps the necklaces of the stone fences and crofts, laced upon the hillsides to mark their territory, like pearls strung on a map.

And I thought deeply of those Grand-Dams of mine, those centuries-back female ancestors, whose lives were grim and sere---I could see them woad-smeared and wielding weapons, as easily as I could imagine their tending their smoky fires and nursing babies too soon gone. I hope they had the solace and uplift of something pretty---a polished stone, a braid of grass, a bird egg hand-cradled miles home, just for its curve of glorious color---and I hope they felt the great accomplishment of adding to the life of their family, not just their survival.

The other side of me came from other parts of the British isles, told in the “Nutmegs” post last year. And Heaven knows, when my ancestor came over/was transported BECAUSE of those nutmegs, the things back in Ireland and England weren’t much to write home about, either, for folks of our working class.

So I suppose that yearning for a home, for a comfortable place to live and raise children, is so ingrained in my genes that I love being home, putting little touches, finding little additions, prinking with a curtain, a bit of lace, an old brooch which would look nice on a totted-up lampshade---those are certainly not talents, but needs, I think.

I NEED to make a nest, to feather it well for me and mine, to add and subtract (the subtracting part becomes more difficult with the addition of each year) and to make it comfortable and warm and welcoming. And whether our nests are the neat rounds of redbirds, with smooth straw and feathers for warmth, or the mud-daubed hammock-roosts of swallows, or the thatchy, gewgaw-frantic piles of magpie gleanings, the lost pull-tabs and gum wrappers arranged into their own wee versions of tatty yards with an old Maytag and a rusting Ford sprawled about---they are OURS, with our mark upon them.

So, we choose our own nests, and we build them to fit the fabric and the taste and the tenor of our own lives.

A bright-lit, topsy-turvy bursting-at-the-seams one, a little bit different from most, with its own windswept flair and all awhirl with people and activity and the bustle of daily life:

Or a serene sunlit spot, safely high, with a lovely view of the world, the cool blue beckoning you home.

Or my own choice: A soft, comfy happy nest, with a lot of comfort, a little bit of something beautiful, and a lot of chicks to fill it.

That's my kind of nest.


Edited at 3 p.m. to add: We've also just been linked by Tonja at http://tonjasgatherings.blogspot.com/ ---she left a lovely comment, then recommended today's post to her own readers. Thank you ALL!

EASTER GATHERING 2010

We had our family celebration late in the day, for we have a wonderful sharing relationship with the other set of Grandparents who live nearby. The kids went there for Easter lunch, egg dyeing with the cousins, and a terrific time, I heard.

So we gathered here about six, for a still-sunny time of day for our own get-together. We had a lovely Easter Dinner, a sharing around of Easter Baskets, and a lot of fun at the table.

Guess whose chair?

We used the Friday-decorated eggs in some little bunny-cups as part of our decorations; the pink Santoku was in my basket. It was NOT part of the decor---I've just coveted one for a while, and wanted to show it.

First we ate our Dinner, the traditional old menu that we’ve served for years (except for the green beans---they’re a new addition, in place of the usual asparagus with blender Hollandaise that we usually have). The beans are a favorite of everyone.

Chris did his fabulous ham on the grill, which went wonderfully with lovely sticks of golden ripe pineapple, and we had a baked sweet potato. A---as in ONE. This was the biggest sweet potato I’ve ever seen---even in the days when we regularly planted and dug our own crop of regulars and sweets, we’d never unearthed such a football-sized marvel. It weighed more than a pound, and instead of the regular old casserole, I could not resist just serving it in its own handy container.

When it came out of the oven, I sliced off the “lid” and, holding it with a potholder on the other end, gently scraped it all up from the bottom with a fork, mixing it with little spoonfuls of the demerara/vanilla butter which always goes into the casserole. When it was all smooth and glistening, one more little dollop of the butter on top, and voila! A special dish, which served all of us, and there is a great rim of it left, plus all that lovely, vitamin-rich chewy skin, all bagged in the fridge for sharing later.

A little bowl of Pink Salad, because it's Easter, and you always have Pink Salad at Easter. I think it's a Law.

For some strange silly reason, I feel the sunny, warm days of Spring start to happen when I start making the season’s container of “cheater pickles.” The scent of the salty, tangy dill pickles, the sugar and cloves which go in dry and in a few magical days, change into sweet, syrupy almost-clear crisp pickles---that’s a wonderful sign of Spring to me, somehow, even more than the odors of the vinegar-syrup simmering for the Summer’s batch of Lime Pickles ever bespeak the hot days of August.

Caro made a wonderful Spinach Pie, from a WW recipe; it was luscious and rich, with Matzoh sections for the crust and some addictive seasoning I cannot name. I had a second slice about midnight, with a little pile of the pickles.

And of course, the Devilled Eggs, tangy with mustard and fresh-ground pepper: The center bowl is Kinda Caprese Salad---little bocconcini, grape tomatoes and olives in a basil-fresh oregano vinaigrette. Odd with Easter food, but it LOOKED pretty.

Our table, with a Colby-Jack Mac & Elbows, especially for our Littlest One, who ate not a bite of it, but quite a few tiny bites of the pink ham, some pineapple, and a couple of well-mangled egg halves, sans olives.

For dessert, Caro brought pretty cupcakes from the bakery:

Those are NOT Rabbit picks---they are Rabbit Rings, and you can wear them, if you're a little kid. You know, when you're sitting by one of those little kids, and she takes the ring off her cupcake and proceeds to lick the gooey frosting off the back of it, and the ring part, and then she drops it, and to keep the BLUE frosting (yes, she chose a blue one) from going down the skirt of her Easter Dress, you make a grab for it? And somehow, by one chance in a million, your finger just slides right into that ring filled with cold, sloppy pre-licked frosting? Not a nice feeling. EEEEWWWWW.

Now if it had been this lovely, warm berry pie, with the raspberries and blackberries and blueberries and strawberries all tossed with Splenda and baked in this lovely hand-done crust scattered with sparkly Turbinado---I'd have volunteered to pull out a plum anytime.

During the morning, I was surprised by the scent of a fabulous mixed-berry pie baking in Caro's upstairs kitchen. The cook always gets the honor of serving the dessert, so I handed her the knife and pie-server, while I scooped little scoops of vanilla-bean Breyer’s. It was WAY delicious, and isn’t it beautiful?

After dinner, we opened our baskets; anyone in the family could pick one from the other---Caro’s the Harry Potter fan, and the beautiful orange knife in her bowl is from Chris (I got the pink one to match). DDIL is a smart young businesswoman, whose baskets and presents usually consist of clothes and a special, uplifting book; she’s such a sweet, spiritual, kind person.
And Chris’ basket contained a note for a weekend-away at our favorite little Indiana inn, from me.

DS is a great cook, so he usually gets kitchen stuff, and we all know who the Elmo, piggy bank, and bunny-basket belong to. And Ganner got her her first pair of white gloves, as befits a young lady learning her manners. The little wooden cylinder behind the piggy bank is a fascinating, beautiful kaleidoscope, made of an old yarn spool by a wonderful local artisan. It’s like looking into a waterfall of diamonds and amethysts.

I know I seem to center all celebrations on the family table, but there are such good times and conversation and moments gathered around it, and cooking has always been such a great part of my life, I just talk about what I know best. There will hardly ever be any pictures of people here, except for perhaps strangers passing by as part of a scene. So Home and Family it is, in words and peripheral pictures, for those are what I do. And now, I’m considering a slice of that divine berry pie for my lunch. And maybe a devilled egg.

I hope that everyone had a wonderful, memorable, fulfilling holiday during this most Blessed of Seasons.

EGG DYEING, 101

1. Buy Eggs. Buy a dye kit (or trust to the little battered McCormick box, veteran of four Easters, nine birthday cakes and that unfortunate business with the pink Margaritas).
2. Boil eggs and cool a bit.
3. Get together the dye pack, a bib, the vinyl-covered highchair, the vinegar, a paper-towel covered tray for drying, and the camera.
4, Cover breakfast table with two black garbage bags, then a layer of paper towels.
5. Go to door to call in Child and her Ganner, to get started.
6. Notice that it’s such a nice day, it would be better for making pictures (and less messy) to do the dyeing outdoors.
7. Get Ganner started on getting out the small lunch table for the patio.
8. Pour about enough vinegar into a small bottle, to save lugging the new gallon up and out.
9. Get the big plastic KoolAid pitcher; put it in a bag with dye-pack, vinegar bottle, a black garbage bag, bib, measuring spoon, wet washcloth, and roll of paper towels.
10. Carry up the items; take them outside and set them on the table.
11. Notice and remember that the table needs a good clean-and-disinfect before using; go in and get the big spray bottle of Orange Pine Sol cleaner; clean tabletop.
12. Running Tag-Team with Ganner, who is busy amusing Child with a new watering can at the expense of her equally new shoes, come back in for high chair. Be thankful once again that it’s tiny and folds up.
13. Set up high chair beside table. Get all items out of bag. Take KoolAid pitcher back into upstairs kitchen for some hot water. Field request from Ganner to bring out the small high-chair with, "You mean THIS one?" Suppress urge to be surly.
14. Hurt finger trying to open dye pack.
15. Ditto, separating the pretty-but-obtuse little plastic tubs. Pour warm water into tubs.
16. Watch it cool while Ganner runs into the house to charge the camera battery. "It'll only take a minute."
17. Watch child slurp all the warm water from the pink tub, one spoon at a time, with the measuring spoon.
18. Drag up a lawn chair and wait.
19. Retrieve and re-fill spilled green tub, which was next on the sip-list.
20. Notice that the little envelope of fizz-tabs seems to have disappeared.
21. Hunt back through all items, including turning sack inside out and looking inside washcloth.
22. Find dye-pack on the ground, stepped-on and smushed into the mud.
23. Turn on hose and wash pack, hoping it’s waterproof.
24. Decide to go ahead and measure vinegar into tubs.
25. Fill four, then relinquish fifth undone, because Child is apparently still thirsty.
26. Go ahead and put fizz tabs into four, making surprisingly nice colors for a kit.
27. Remain happily innocent of how strong those colors ARE.
28. Put one egg in the dye in green tub, just to let Child try it out.
29. Child reaches for egg, dyeing all her fingers.
30. Handwipe and offer the wire apparatus, which is wielded enthusiastically.
31. Ganner emerges from house, snapping like the Grand-Paparazzi he is.
32. Notice that one of the tabs has not fizzed. Poke it with the measuring spoon and watch as it falls into tiny crumbs. Go into house for trusty old McCormick pink.
33. Get back outside in time to find Child cracking egg on table, then pinching off great shards of the shell. Ganner says it’s OK---he’ll eat it.
34. Child dyes five eggs, which go onto the tray for drying. Child retrieves all five and plonks them into tubs---with the uncanny knack of returning not a one to its original tub.
35. Remove pink egg from green tub; remark that you WONDERED how camo was made.
36. Observe that all five eggs have taken on a decidedly brownish cast, with a few branching over into brindle.
37. Put five more eggs into tubs. Joog them up and down a bit. Remove the most beautiful blue egg in all the history of Paas.
38. See the already-done eggs plonked on top of the eggs in the tubs.
39. Remove what you can, placate wailing child, offer more fresh white eggs into tubs.
40. Run around table and deftly catch egg wobbling for the edge.
41. Get all the khaki/camo eggs onto the tray, with the three once-dyed ones. Notice that Glum Green is this year’s new Pink.
42. Dump dye into the Weatherbush; gather up all items and cram back into sack. Vainly scrub Child’s hands and the splashes on her legs. Remember too late that she's going to dinner with her other Grandparents this evening.
43. Get out her new plastic bathtub, set it on the patio; run into house for a towel, a bathcloth with a little squirt of lavender bubble-bath in it, and a fresh Pull-up.
44. Bring KoolAid pitcher back into up kitchen for hot water; use hose to make water perfect temperature.
45. Let Child play with pouring bubbles back and forth with new watering can until water cools.
46. Scrub most of the residual dye from her hands and legs; bathe her.
47. Wrap her sudsy body in a big towel, bring her indoors, get her dressed for a nap and settle her in her room with three books, a stuffed bear, a Spring breeze through the windows, and the music of all five windchimes.
48. Bring in all the stuff in the yard; empty and wash tub; set in sun to dry.
49. Gently decline offer to sit and look at the 940 pictures Ganner made of the process.
50. Rejoice in the company I keep, and wish I'd been able to find those bunny ears worn by every child dyeing eggs since 1999.