Snowpocalypse, Snowmageddon

To all of our friends abroad and afar, you who have been reading about Seattle’s Storm of the Century, the storm that was supposed to set records, dumping feet of the white stuff on us and stunning us with its snowy severity, let me just say: not. At least, not here on the island.

And we’re really sorry.  Because boy oh boy did we stock up: on firewood for when the power went out, leaving us shivering,

on candles for when the power went out, leaving us in the dark, and on groceries, especially anything that I could cook on the woodstove for, you guessed it, when the power went out, leaving us kitchenless in our all-electric abode.

Instead what we got was a pretty little four inches, maybe slightly less at our house, sheltered as we are under the cedars and firs. I went out looking for signs of snowmageddon and instead found

my favorite summer garden bench deliciously frosted,

the ferns frozen in sculptural formations,

the last rose hip gently giving up the ghost,

and even, way down at the bottom of the hill, our letter carrier’s truck, proving that she wasn’t letting snow deter her from her duly appointed route.

Beppo and Zazou had evidently been outside, although when I stomped the snow off my boots and shook the flakes out of my hair, diving back into the warmth of the house,

Shel and Zazou, who were entertaining themselves by the blazing woodstove, looked at me as if I were the abominable snowperson,

while Beppo was curled into the tightest possible ball, all four paws securely tucked away from any threat of snow.

I’m tempted to cook spareribs on top of the woodstove anyway, even though the power hasn’t so much as flickered, but instead I think I’ll go put them in the oven and while they’re cooking, run out naked into the snow and plunge into the hot tub, pretending that I’m in Japan in a scalding thermal pool in sight of Mount Fuji. It’ll be no less true than the predicted snowpocalypse, and a whole lot more fun.

L’Epée De Damoclès

Sometimes the glass feels all the way empty. Sometimes it feels like living on Death Row. You’d think that after 18 years I’d be used to it, that sword of Damocles hanging over our heads, but these feelings hit me predictably, about every three months, when Shel gets his CT scans.

Every time I think: he’s coughing too much, bleeding too much, winded all the time, this can only mean bad news. Lately he’s been reminding me: you always think that, but I’m always ok. Well no, he’s not always ok. A year and a half ago he was told to get his affairs in order. He did. We cried, we agonized, we despaired. We invited the Death Doctor into our house, discussed the how and when of it all. And now, by yet another miracle of modern medicine, he’s a lot better. Since that horrible day in the doctor’s office we’ve spent six months in our beloved home in France. We’ve laughed far more than we’ve cried. Life has been good to us, and as we did with those empty glasses shining in the morning light, strewn about after a late night party, we’ve washed off the residues, not of martinis and wine and tiramisu but of sorrow and panic, and carried on.

Last night, once again, I imagined my life as a widow. It’s a ritual now, one I perform on each CT’s Eve. After 18 years together, a life alone takes on desperate proportions in my imagination. It seems to me that the sun could never shine on that life, the glass would always be empty, the sword would fall and life as I know it would end, brutally.

But like the luckiest of Death Row inmates, today we had a blessed reprieve. Shel’s fine, or at least as fine as he was the last time he was poked and prodded, and that’s pretty fine indeed, for a guy who’s had cancer for 18 years, and is turning 65 next week. Long ago he said that his cancer goal was “to get old and die of something else.” By gum, I think he’s going to make it. Let’s raise a glass to that, a full one.

Good Morning, America

Although when we’re in France we live right next door to a bakery where Shel can go in his slippers to get his morning pain au chocolat, one thing he can’t get there is a blueberry muffin. Or any sort of muffin, for that matter, but blueberry is his favorite, and he misses them. In fact, you almost never see blueberries in France, although they do exist, and so, as soon as we shook off a bit of the jet lag resulting from crossing nine time zones and getting plunked down unceremoniously in the middle of winter, I decided to make him some muffins.

For years I searched for the perfect blueberry muffin recipe, only to learn with each new attempt, that he still preferred the oil-bomb supermarket variety to any that I made. Even using fresh blueberries from our garden didn’t sway him from his conviction that the Safeway bakery department made a better blueberry muffin that I did. You can imagine the shame and frustration I felt (matched only by similar emotions when I tried to duplicate his childhood favorite, yellow cake with chocolate frosting, only to learn that a mix from Duncan Hines was the only way to replicate the cake he loved).

But then I discovered the One True Recipe, the one Shel prefers to any other blueberry muffin in the world. Click here to see the original recipe, and I’ll give you my few special tweaks to it below. I’m sure it’s perfect as is, but according to Shel it’s better than perfect in my variation. For one thing, I make mini muffins, so he can eat a whole plateful. For another, I use a can of those tiny blueberries instead of fresh or frozen large berries, And lastly, I top them with raw sugar, for an extra crunch. If you have a supermarket muffin addict in your household, give these a try. And if you’ve been searching forever for the perfect recipe, I think you’ve found it. Now, if you happen to have the perfect recipe for yellow cake with chocolate frosting…….

Better Than The Best Blueberry Muffins

1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1 1/4 cups sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
2 cups flour, divided use
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 14 oz can blueberries, packed in water
3-4 T raw or turbinado sugar

Preheat oven to 375°. Line mini-muffin tins with paper cups (I get about 34 muffins  from this recipe) and spray muffin cups lightly with something like Spectrum canola spray. Place the blueberries in a strainer to drain thoroughly.

In a stand mixer, if possible, cream together the butter, salt and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time. In a small bowl, stir together 1 3/4 cups of flour and the baking powder. With the mixer on low speed, add the flour alternately with the buttermilk, mixing just until smooth. Crush 1/4 of the drained blueberries and stir them lightly into the batter by hand. In a small bowl, stir the remaining 1/4 cup of flour together with the rest of the drained blueberries, then fold this mixture gently into the batter.

Drop the batter by the heaping teaspoonful into the prepared muffin cups. Sprinkle the tops of the muffins generously with the raw sugar. Bake muffins for about 23 minutes until golden brown.

A Small Leap Forward

The Champagne is overflowing the fridge. The wild boar is simmering peacefully in the oven. The puree of cauliflower with creamed leeks is ready. The Brussels sprouts with toasted pecans are next on the list. The guests are bringing everything else, some are even bringing the dishes to serve their course on, in deference to the fact that we’re leaving France in just four days and haven’t even begun to pack. Every chair in the house, plus several from the garden, will be in use. Someone is planning games to be played while waiting for the stroke of midnight, someone else is bringing French noisemakers, without which one cannot celebrate the reveillon de Saint Sylvestre in a properly French way. I’ve heard that there may even be dancing. There are pink clouds in the evening sky and the omens are good.

We’ll be in 2012 before many of you, but I’m not going to give you any advance hints. You’ll have to discover for yourself what the new year has to offer. Every year I’m torn between thinking “oh, it’s just another day” and “wow, it might be a whole new life!” As usual, the truth is probably somewhere in between. I’ll still be me, you’ll still be you. It’s what we make of it that we’ll remember a year from now. And like every year, we’ll say that we can’t believe how the year has flown by, only this time it will be more true than at any time in the past, since without a doubt time goes faster and faster with every passing year, even if Einstein didn’t see it that way.

My plan is to step boldly through that door into tomorrow, taking my own sweet time, and I hope yours is too. See you on the other side.

Being The Light

The darkest days of the year are behind us and today is a day to contemplate peace on earth. A day to remember to make your time on our sweet planet count, to be the light you want to see. From me to you: peace and joy in all you do.

Fear Of Cardoons

I’ve always thought that cardoons were an absolute waste of chlorophyll, not to mention growing space and market space. They look prehistoric, are a hassle to prepare, and up until now, never tasted like much of anything. Sure, you can read about their vaunted delicate artichoke heart-like flavor, but I’ve always thought that was a polite way to say bland, bland, bland. Unfazed, our friend Alice gave me a clump of cardoons the other day, and recited me her recipe for Cardes à la Provençale. It’s a typical Provençal dish at this time of year, and she spoke of anchovies, and garlic, and I found that tempting, but memories of previous bad experiences with the fibrous stalks made me, ulp, toss the stuff. Besides, I reasoned, you could eat cardboard with anchovy and garlic sauce and it would probably taste, if not exactly good, at least not too different than the cardoons themselves would.

Undaunted, Alice invited us over and prepared the dish herself, after extracting from me my sheepish admission that no, I hadn’t actually used the cardoons she gave me.

Ok, I admit it.  I was wrong, I was absolutely wrong. I remembered having to cook the dratted things for an hour and a half before they got tender. Alice instructed me to use only the tender, white hearts of the cardoon, not any of the green and mega-tough outer stalks. You do have to pull off the long strings, as you might with some over-age celery stalk, but that’s sort of fun, in a perverse way. And while I didn’t discover any sort of delicate artichoke flavor, because the anchovies and garlic pack a real wallop, and while the dish will never win any beauty contests, it is, in fact, pretty darn good, especially in a relatively small quantity as a starter. So get yourself a clump of cardoon, try this recipe, and imagine that you’re spending Christmas in Provence.

Alice’s Cardes à la Provençale

serves 3-4

1 large clump heart of cardoon
4 T white vinegar
8 anchovy fillets
5 cloves garlic
3 T olive oil
about 1 cup heavy cream, up to 1 1/2 cups

First, steel yourself. You need to separate and wash the stalks, because cardoon can harbor a lot of inner dirt. Next, de-string the stalks, enjoying yourself as much as you can in the process. Fill a large pot with water and add the vinegar. Cut across the stalks as if you were thickly slicing celery, halving lengthwise any really large stalks.

As you cut the cardoons, drop the pieces immediately into the vinegary water, to keep them from turning brown. When all the cardoon pieces are in the pot, bring it to a boil, then lower the heat a bit and boil gently for 20-30 minutes. You want the cardoons to be fork-tender, but still slightly firm, as they’re nicer to eat with a little bit of crunch. Drain the cardoons into a colander.

Heat the olive oil in a skillet and add the anchovies, mashing them with a fork until they dissolve. Add the garlic and sauté until it turns lightly golden. Put the cardoons into the skillet and stir to combine. Now add the cream, starting with one cup. What you’re going to do is cook the whole mixture until the cream reduces and a thick creamy sauce covers the cardoons. In my skillet, which is large, I ended up using a cup and a half. Don’t be shy with the cream, it’s the ingredient that brings the whole thing together. When the cardoons are luxuriously coated, add lots of freshly ground black pepper. You probably won’t need to add any salt because the anchovies are pretty salty, but you may add more if you wish.

Serve all alone on a small plate as a first course with a good bread to mop up the last bits of sauce. And fear cardoons no more, this dish conquers all. While eating it, the word cardboard will never once cross your mind.

Miam! Miam!

I love the word miam, which corresponds to our word yum. It’s a kid’s word, but adults can say it when we’re tired of trying to find yet another synonym for delicious. And in this case, the Miam! in question was the name of a food salon in nearby Alès, where dozens of sorts of deliciousness were on display and for sale in advance of the holidays.

I confess that the first time we went to one of these salons I didn’t quite know what to do. There was an overwhelming profusion of food and drink, to be tasted and purchased, and I ended up buying almost nothing. But later I realized that this is how French people prepare for the holidays, by stocking up on lots of good things, like a case of this 2005 Champagne that was made by the fourth generation in the family business and found its way home with us because it is truly miam, and all of the other foods that make a holiday here special.

Miles of charcuterie,

including the tantalizing little fribbles and frabbles of fried duck that I love to warm up and scatter on salad,

and mountains of mushrooms, notably these cèpes, which we call porcini, and most especially the cèpes du chataignier, those that grow at the feet of chestnut trees and are incredibly aromatic.

On the sweet side there were jewel-like candied fruits,

an unimaginable selection of macarons,

fancy cakes,

and beautiful chocolates made with olive oil.

For before-dinner drinking there were guys selling cartagène, the local apéritif made from wine and grape juice,

for a main course you could buy the most beautifully decorated beef roast I’ve ever seen (too pretty to cook, I thought),

and for before-dessert nibbling, cheeses of every description.

Should anyone feel peckish at the sight of all that food, there was hope: escargot sandwiches,

freshly-made pizza,

the famously stretchy potato and cheese concoction called aligot,

and if you were a young baker who had been working hard all morning making tarte aux pommes, you could sit down to a nice glass of…..Coke. Yes, they hid the bottle under the table while I took their photo, but Coke it is in those glasses, proving that all in France is not foie gras and finesse. At a place like Miam! a lot of it is about people making things by hand, and selling to other people who want fingerprints on their food. And yes, it’s also about Coke-drinking teenagers who are in the midst of preparing themselves to become bakers, the true backbone of French society.

When we crack that Champagne we’ll raise a glass to those kids, and to all the people who spend their lives creating wonderful things for us to eat. Miam!

Colmar Highlights

On our last night in Colmar I stood on the little bridge outside our apartment and thought “I could get used to seeing this every day.”  Actually, I kind of wanted to live forever in our adorable little home in La Maison Bleue, which is a wonderful place to stay if you’re ever in Colmar.

We’d sit in the cozy kitchen and Shel would eat the little bread people called mannala, and the swans would get any leftover crumbs. Kind of a Hansel and Gretel dream, and very comforting.

We’d go out shopping for gingerbread

or pretty dishes and textiles, which are two really strong points of shopping in Alsace,

and we found plenty of Christmas gifts all within easy strolling distance of home. We also tried a few restaurants, and if you get a chance to have the jambonneau with choucroute at La Taverne, or the venison stew called civet de biche et cerf at Winstub Brenner, jump at it.

What we didn’t expect at all was that we’d have a chance to be on French television, but there, right outside the museum, they were about to film an hour-long introduction to Colmar with a live audience, and even though it was a toss-up (go to the museum, become a star on French TV, go to the museum…nah!” we happily settled ourselves onto the risers and indeed, when the show aired the next day, there we were, looking right at home.

However, it was just a short visit, and once we had bought as much cheese (that fabulously smelly Munster), wine (those ultra-delicious Alsatian whites), clothing (aforementioned hat and jacket) and gifts (now that would be telling) as we could reasonably carry back with us on the train, we had to head back down the south, laden like Santa but minus the reindeer, tired, and happy. Christmas markets will do that to you, all of that, if you let them.

Alsatian Eye Candy

I’ve gotten lots of requests for more pictures of Colmar, so here you have it, the beauty that is Colmar during Christmas Market.

There, wasn’t that worth a thousand words?

Oh So Cute In Colmar

Colmar generally looks like a post card, at least the part of it where we’re staying, which is called La Petite Venise, Little Venice, because of its canals. We came for the first days of the annual Christmas markets, thinking we’d escape the madding crowds. Boy was that ever wrong.

Right outside our front door is the Children’s Market, a hotbed of strollers and googly-eyed kids wanting to go on the pony roller coaster ride. In addition to the hot wine, vin chaud, that’s on every street corner, this market also features hot apple juice for the little ones, and a fair selection of toys. It’s a madhouse. But once through our front door, and out the back one

we’re on a huge private deck overlooking the canal, home to a pair of swans that appreciate bretzels, the local form of pretzels. I know this personally, as I was feeding them a bretzel when Shel snapped this picture. The splendid deck will be featured again later, as our kind landlords had told us that boats full of children would be singing right under our window as soon as it got dark, which indeed they were, as you shall see and hear.

But first we went shopping, which is, after all, what one does at Christmas markets. Shel needed breakfast food

and I wanted something interesting to drink.

Shel got a spiffy new hat, in which I think he looks adorable.

I really wanted one of these stork hats, but the one size fits most didn’t actually fit me. But later I was glad I hadn’t bought anything for myself because I felt justified in buying

a ravishing new jacket, in which I feel particularly chic.

And then, as night began to fall, Shel (who’s frileux, always cold) watched out the window

while I went out onto the aforementioned fabulous deck, and we were treated to a lovely musical moment

as boatloads of little boys drifted down the canal,

lined up in front of our apartment, and sang, ever so sweetly.