I Sent You a Patrol Car, a Boat, and a Helicopter

The Summer That Wasn't is losing even that specious hold it barely possessed on the season and leaves begin to slip from the trees. These leaves were already beginning to turn their coats at the end of July. Makes you wonder what kind of winter it will be.

Tool Guy has been planning a road trip for a few weeks now. His mother is feeling poorly and he'd like to jaunt down to see her. Logistically, it works better if he goes alone. Prior to now, the single vehicle family factor has been a hurdle. Since he got his new set of wheels, which he calls "ambrosia for the back," he has begun to imagine that he could do this on his Harley. Not a few machinations have been in the works to finesse this possibility into a plan. Biking buddies have offered and then rescinded. Planning routes, plotting possibilities, preparing the bike.

I decided to send a care package to my mother-in-love, Claudia, along with him. In my herbal apprenticeship, one of our projects was assembling herbal eye-pillows. The combination that The Herbalist had collated was dried roses, lavender (calming), sassafras bark (earthiness), rosemary (remembrance), and mugwort (sweetens dreams) that we harvested, weighted down with rice or flax seeds. She brought out a selection of shimmery silks and I settled on the pink one. Princess pink. Guess who sleeps with that one? And reports that her frequent nightmares have gone! As we sat, stitching up the fabric envelopes, one of the other apprentices shared that during her chemo recovery, she had been gifted with a similar sort of pillow and it was the most comforting thing she possessed. On days when she was totally wasted by the treatments, she said she would curl up on the couch around this pillow. Sounded like something for Claudia.

Herbal Eye Pillow

2 T dried lavender
2 T dried roses
1 T dried rosemary
1/2 t sassafras bark
2 stem's of mugwort, dried, destemmed, and crushed
1 cup white rice

Pick a tactilely satisfying fabric cut into rectangle per personal measurements: Measure the distance from one temple to the other. This will be the length. Measure from the bridge of the nose to just above the browridge. This will be the width. Mark these measurements on a piece of fabric, doubled over and cut out. With right sides, together, stitch the open sides, leaving an end open for filling.

Mix together the herbals and pour into the open end. A canning funnel is particularly useful in this application, especially if you're mass-producing these. Close the end, tucking the raw edges under and stitch closed. Sweet dreams! I decided that my sister-in-love needed one, too.

A co-worker approached Tool Guy with an offer to use a spare car. He felt a bit nervous about the idea of Tool Guy tooling across the country on a bike by himself, Harley and all notwithstanding. Tool Guy was appreciative of the offer, but declined. He was a bit nervous about the whole road-trip-bike prospect, but determined. Mostly just keeping an eye on the weather.

Well, he was a bit nervous about the weather, too. Rainy as it has been, he wasn't elated at the prospect of three days on the road in the rain. The forecast has been less than auspicious. Growing up in Louisiana, there's more rain than sunshine and hurricanes and floods are as humdrum there as earthquakes are in Los Angeles. Ho-hum. I remember that old joke I'd heard growing up:

After a frenetic week of hysterical meteorological predictions for a Category Three hurricane, the first of the dreaded raindrops began. The police sent out patrol cars stop house by house and encourage people to leave. One good old boy greeted the officer with sanguine optimism. "Mais, no. Ah grew up here. Mah daddy grew up here. His daddy grew up here. Dah Lord's gonna take care o' me. I done ax Him." Nothing the officer could say would dissuade him.

As torrential rains fell, the bayous began to rise and lap at the steps of people's homes. Police patrols in boats went around collecting the previously reluctant and assisting them to shelter. Once again, the insistent good old boy maintained that he was going to stay put and that God was going to save him.

The water levels grew higher and higher, so before long, the persistent hold-out had taken to his roof to wait. At this point, a rescue helicopter came around, throwing down a rope ladder and bull-horning to him to climb up. He shook his head and insisted that God would save him, thank you very much.

Sadly, the man succumbed to the forces of nature and found himself in Heaven. He gazed reproachfully at God and ask why He had not saved him. God levelly returned his gaze and said, "I sent a patrol car, a boat, and a helicopter. What more did you want?"

A week before the trip, Tool Guy was chatting and sharing his plans for his trip with our pastor. The next day, he got a phone call from the pastor, who indicated that he'd not felt at peace with the idea of Tool Guy harleying across country and knew of a car that would be available to use if he was interested.

Not for nothing have we been married twenty-five years, because when Tool Guy called me to report this development, we had an immediate brain-share. We each shouted out the punch line of the aforementioned joke together and laughed. "I'm not waiting for the helicopter," he said. "I'm taking the car."

Halfway through his trip, Tool Guy called home on his spanking new Tracfone. When he got into Georgia, the sky opened up and it rained bullets. Nope. Not waiting for that helicopter.

When Your Hand Finds to Do Hard Things

It hasn't been a gardening year, but it certainly has been a foraging year. I'm learning that when something is available in abundance, lay some by, because next year may not be so extravagant. Last year, it was impossible to see the horizon for the poles of mullein obtruding themselves upon the vista. I dehydrated leaves and gathered the flowers, until I felt absolutely obsessive. This year, there has been only sporatic, lonely plants claiming the occasional attention in the occasional meadow. I'm not despairing, though, knowing I'm covered on that front because of last year's surplus.

One of this year's foraging finds was blackberries. What a blast from my past! As I was pouring the fruits of our collective labors into the baking dish, the aroma of hot blackberries dragged me back into my childhood and I started to recount...again...to the Hobbits about what blackberry pickings were like where I grew up.

I come from a make-it-do family. My grandparents survived the Depression on a farm in the South and, even afterwards, a farm isn't a place of affluence. My own childhood was hedged by strict economy and sweat equity. A foraging friend and I were discussing hunting (which my Dad did annually) and fishing and the potential for local game in these areas. It reminded me of summer Louisiana afternoons, when we would load up into our Buick Century, with buckets, nets, and, um, scrap chicken parts. How's that for an idyllic summer interlude? Ah, but wait. Not far down the road, the Intercoastal Canal brought tides inland and even the roadside ditches were home to countless blue crab. When I was Princess' age, I was adept at dangling a chicken neck on a string to entice a crab's attention, only to swoop it up with the net. Many a dish of crab etouffee over many a summer. Gourmet cuisine on a shoestring. Literally.

Blackberry foraging was another summer outing. My hometown was host to a then-defunct military base, that, at the time, had left miles of runway to crumble, surrounding by miles of waste fields. Fields quickly overrun with blackberry brambles. Being public property, the blackberries were finders-keepers to any intrepid individual who was willing to wade out and collect them. I have memories of enamel canning bath pots and every imaginable container from our kitchen collected into the back of that Century, while we piled in with long sleeves and pants, ready to bring home that black gold and not stopping until every monstrous container overflowed. We reckoned the stickers...and the week-long recovery from chiggers...to be a small price to pay for a year's supply of blackberries, canned or frozen.

This year, a dear friend, constitutionally unable to keep such an embarrassment of riches to herself, called me up to make a date to show me where she had found an incredible score of blackberries...which was also where she "thought" there were some elderberry bushes. She was right on both counts. We spent the next two months tag-teaming on tripping out to the field and collecting whatever was ripe of both types of berries.

This was a new experience for the Hobbits. They've become somewhat accustomed to my vagaries...my tendency to come to a screeching halt on the shoulder of the road, because I spotted some stand of plants that I've just developed an affinity for, the fact that I now always carry a backpack with two field guides, a pair of snips, gardening gloves, and a jeweler's loupe (for more exacting plant identification, doncha know?), and my total addiction to the smell of freshly harvested mugwort. But most of my passions don't require much in the way of physical discomfort for them. So when my friend and I waded into the briar patch to reach the more shy and recalcitrant of the berries, all three of them were rather disaffected with the process. The Hobbits are used to suffering of a sort, but it's more of mental endurance than a physical one. My friend encouraged them that it was good to do hard things. Dog had a harder time considering that the blackberries were worth the purchase price, but Bug threw himself into the task...if not into the brambles themselves.

Sourdough "Bisquick" Cobbler...like Mom used to make...well, almost. _{(Thanks for the inspiration, Mom, and not just with the recipe, either!)}

Berry Filling:

3/4 cup water
2 T tapioca starch
1 quart berries
3/8 cup (6 T) maple syrup
2 T vegetable glycerin (if you want to bump up the sweet without bumping up the sugar)

Dissolve tapioca in water. In large saucepan, bring to a boil and cook until thickened. Add berries and sweeteners, then heat through. Pour into 10x10 baking dish.

Cobbler:

1 cup sourdough starter
1 cup dehydrated potato flakes
2 T tapioca starch
2 T potato starch
1/2 t salt
1 t guar gum
1 T maple syrup
1/2 t baking soda
1 T vinegar
1 egg
2 T oil
Enough coconut milk for all of the liquid ingredients to equal 1 cup

Measure out liquids into a bowl, add starter, then mix. Add remaining ingredients, except for the baking soda and vinegar and stir. Allow to sit while the oven is preheating to 425* to give the potato flakes time to rehydrate. When oven is heated, mix in baking soda and vinegar, and pour over the blackberry mixture. Place in oven and bake for 25-30 minutes or until crust is brown and crispy.

After their first firey baptism into foraging til it hurts, the Hobbits took to the task with equanimity. Some days were rainy and we got wet. Some days were sunny and we were hot and thirsty. (Hint: This year, the rainy, wet days were more numerous than the hot and thirsty days!) We always got scratched. Good thing that last year was a bumper year for plantain, because this year hasn't been, but we've got enough salve to see us through another season and still managed to sooth the welts left by the briars. We didn't get any chiggers. I'm going to give the credit for that to my rockin' bug spray that I cobbled together from essential oils. At least, that was one less hard thing that we had to do while we foraged with our might...

Whatsover Your Hand Finds to Do

Anyone got tomatoes? Yeah? Lucky dogs. This stretch of the Shire didn't fare well for tomatoes this year. Between the cool--did I say "cool"...nay, I meant to say "cold"--temperatures all spring and summer, the rain and early late blight, not much is pinking up. Sigh. You know that you haven't had much in the way of sunshine when even your squash and cucumbers aren't plotting world domination. But, hey, mark it on your calendars...I harvested my first cuke today! There's so much rain that there's mold growing on the metal items out in the yard. See why I call this the Pacific North East? All summer I planned to do the "wardrobe flip" thing where I clamber up to the attic and schlepp all of the warm weather clothes down and toss the winter stuff up there until we need it again. Didn't happen until August and almost didn't happen at all. I guess this has been a "summer optional" year?

Tool Guy is equally frustrated. He bought a Harley Davidson Sportster "to go back and forth to work." If your Tool Guy comes home with this persuasive argument, run. Run like the wind. He does have the advantage in the argument that the extra "running around" he is doing is cheaper on gas. That has the virtue of being the truth. Fortunate for him. The frustration point is that in the eight years that we've lived here, this is the absolute wettest summer we've had. So he doesn't get to ride as often as he would wish. Pauvre petit cha'... So on the near-mythical sunny day, he's generally to be found at the leading edge of a blur, leaving behind nothing but the rumble.

I'm learning some valuable gardening lessons this year. I had planned for a "snap-back" year. Last year, I inadvertently sabotaged my garden. Then my greenhouse collapsed. I expected that I'd be able to sail into this spring and replenish my empty tomato sauce jars. Tool Guy even trekked up to the greenhouse manufacturer to pick up the replacement for me. I rubbed my hands together with glee and planned for great things.

Alas, cheri, it was not meant to be. The cauliflower never sprouted. The broccoli took two tries before the starts came up. Ditto on most of the tomatoes. Only one of my pepper plants came up. The beans and cucumbers took three tries before they came up. I bent my head lower and persisted.

We did get the greenhouse up and my starts did survive. But that's about all. I think I'm going to manage to harvest enough from each kind of vegetable that I planted to have seeds to plant next year. I unbent and visited the local farmer's market where I acquired twenty pounds of tomatoes. The newly minted jars of ketchup are cooling in my basement now. An expected blessing arrived in the form of a phone call from a friend inviting me to share in the bounty of her garden. Cucumbers and beans galore! For the three days following our thankful swoop through her garden, Bug hovered over the ripening pickle jars on the table, persistently asking if they were ready to eat. When I decanted those pickles, gratitude added an extra bit of flavor to the relish.

She also called me to share--recklessly generous friend that she is--the location of an untapped berry range. And buried in the midst of the blackberry brambles peeked several persistent elderberry bushes. We tag teamed during the weeks of the ripening berries. This was the Hobbits first excursion in berrying and it was quite the lesson in persistence, endurance, fortitude, and delayed gratification. But they were troupers and endured the belated sunshine that finally decided to make August feel like August. Not having a garden to demand our time and energy, we were freed to forage and immerse ourselves in this unexpected boon. "Whatsoever your hand finds to do, do it with your might."*



Neither my friend nor I having dealt with storing berries before, we discussed possible plans of attack. Syrup preparations appear to have a storage life of about six months and there was much more bounty than six months of the worst colds and flues would require. The next idea was to dry them. In the absence of detailed directions on line, I launched into a new episode of Dehydrating Dangerously. While I juggled racks in the oven, the impatient clusters that my overstuffed oven could not accommodate hung heavy like grapes from my pot rack, waiting their turns. I set the oven to 115* and made sure that there were trays under the dehydrating racks. Normally, I'm not that scrupulous, but elderberries will shrivel down to the dimensions of a flea. And with all this work, I begrudge any flea that escapes this circus!



And, of course, berries aren't about to be so obliging as to all dry at equal rates and equal degrees. Of course. And I harbor a horrifying vision of investing all of this work into drying all of this abundance, only later to find it riddled with pockets of mold because of an undetected imperfectly-dried berry. (I'm also hedging my bets by storing them in very small batches, paired up with silica packets.)

Sorting through the dried berries fingerful by careful fingerful for the semi-dried is much like panning for gold and equally tedious. I'd recommend an audio book for this process, but the quality of the sound plunking on the bottom of the china bowl became a part of the diagnostic process. A plink is dry, but a plunk goes back into the oven.

So this process does give the mind wide scope for finding subjects of meditation. When doing this, come prepared to think. One of the things I mediated on is that $16 a pound average rate for dried elderberries isn't really as dear as it first seems. Heh. It does, however, provide fodder for discussion with Hobbits about the concept of "sweat equity." I remember Sally Jesse Raphael, when she only had a radio program, sharing her evaluation process: what do you have more of? Time or money? Mostly the answer has been "time," though I have come to the conclusion that, these days, it may be running neck and neck. Still, the idea that I'm putting up food and medicine that I can reach back to even as far out as a few years from now gives me the motivation to press on and bury my hands deeply and enthusiastically in whatsoever they find to do. Even the unexpected. On second thought, particularly the unexpected.

*_{Ecclesiastes 9:10}

...Back Again

The vacations of my childhood always began in the mystical, pre-dawn hours of the morning. To this day, setting out on the road before sunrise lends a nascent thrill to even the must mundane chore. This has rubbed off onto the Hobbits. Bug, my dawdler, will even put some steam into his morning routine if he thinks that doing so will get us on the road before the sky begins to lighten.

I remember rolling out of bed very shortly after pulling up the covers to sleep. It wasn't that we had such a tight schedule to meet that we would leave so early, but that my parents--my mother in particular--couldn't sleep for the excitement of the outing. This sort of thing seems to be generationally contagious. We had no difficulty wrangling everyone--a task I frequently refer to as "herding cats"--into their seat and we were off.

Too Guy was our cruise director, having planned this entire outing. I nestled into my pillows and promptly went back to sleep, the familiar profiles of this neck of the Shire having exhausted its charms for me. The Hobbits dove into some backseat vidoes, breaking a long, parentally-imposed media fast. No "are we there yets?" here. Heh.

Everyone was suitably impressed when we drove up to our accommodations. The Hobbits swarmed the playscape while I donned decontam gear and tackled the kitchenette. The toaster was the first prisoner of war to be confined to the upper reaches of the cabinetry and I sandblasted the counter top. I washed all of the remaining contents of the cabinets and hung up the Certificate of Inspection. We were in business. A quick pot of pasta and a bottle top opener and...et voila...dinner is served!




Is there any vacation attraction that can rival the lure of a swimming pool? All of Bar Harbor spread before us--or at least a nice chunk of shoreline--and these Philistines want to swim in the pool. What can I tell you? I try. I really do. While they were distracted by the possibilities of cannonballs, Tool Guy played lifeguard and shooed me away to indulge in some "me" time. I slunk away to the Jack Russell Steakhouse, beckoning me from across the street. They never missed me.

Dining out alone can be like slow dancing by yourself: a bit awkward and self-concious. So I brought my own dinner companion. A book. I presented myself to the hostess, anticipating "a booth, in the back, in the corner, in the dark." What I got was the garret at the top of the stairs. All to myself. Is there any felicity in the world equal to this? I admired the original woodwork, the eyebrow windows, authentic glazing and interior plaster work finished in a singular shade of glistening orange. Funky, but it worked.

Not much on the menu was gluten free, but hey, does one come to Bar Harbor for aught other reason than to eat lobster? So I ordered fries as an appetizer--and didn't ask what they were fried in--followed by grilled asparagus and lobster with butter. And solitude. Sheer bliss.




Back at the room, Tool Guy and I tag teamed. While he went to the Jack Russell and duplicated my order, much to the amusement of Adam, our server, I took the Hobbits on an expedition to scale the not-insubstantial shoreline rocks. We scrambled over monstrous boulders, foraged for mussel shells and vacated crab exo-skeletons, and examined the bladderwrack that ebb tide had exposed. Too cool.

The next two days were crammed with a sailing cruise, window shopping, and hiking in Acadia National Park. The Hobbits tumbled into bed, sun-pinked and satiated. At night, when the fog would roll in, we would briefly rouse at the low tones of an incoming fog horn. Yep. We're in Maine.





My farewell dinner at the Jack Russell felt as if it needed a crowning finish. The only gluten free item for dessert was creme brulee. Mmmmm. Don't mind if I do. The first bite infused me with the inspiration for my next the inspiration for my next expedition into Cooking Dangerously.

Casein Free Creme Brulee

8 egg yolks
1 cup thick coconut milk/coconut cream
3 tsp. maple sugar sugar
2 T vanilla extract
Maple sugar for sprinkling

Heat sugar and coconut milk/cream to boiling in heavy sauce pan. Add vanilla extract to eggs and gently incorporate. When the coconut cream is boiling, pour a small amount into the eggs to "temper" them, stirring continually. When the eggs have mixed with the coconut milk/cream, pour the rest of the hot milk into the mixture. Now pour into ramekins or molds and place in a chaffing dish or, for those on a Lobelia Baggins budget, a cake pan. Since my life is lacking in the politer refinements of polished society such as ramekins, I opted to use silicone muffin forms as the container in which to make the creme brulee. Fill the dish or pan with boiling water to about halfway up the mold/ramekin. Place the entire assembly into a 325* oven and bake for 15-20 minutes or until center is almost set. When cooked, remove to a clear surface and sprinkle maple sugar over the tops. Return to the oven, now set on broil at 500*. Keeping a close eye for carmelizing--in my kitchen that would be called "smoking"--let broil for 5-7 minutes or until desired degree of lava has been achieved. Brace yourself for the oooooohs and aaaaaaahs.



As a vacation, it was, as all vacations are, too short. The Hobbits brought home from sand from Ogunquit's beach; I refrained from doing any foraging in Acadia, a feat that I want recognition for. The wild roses were extraordinarily tempting. (Does anyone know of a commercial source for these?) Lots of memories. Princess declared it to be her best vacation. Fortunate, that, especially being her only one.

Here's to the next one!