life, in con­cen­trat­ed form

It’s the pic­ture that will make us laugh in deep­est Feb­ru­ary, the pic­ture that will sum up Sum­mer 2014, the one that spells our fam­i­ly in a nut­shell (and I mean that) and keeps us look­ing for­ward to every time we have the chance to be together.

You know those fam­i­ly sto­ries where you can’t real­ly tell truth from fic­tion any­more?  This is one of them.  “The Tall Tale of the Ice Bag.”  Yes, it has our name in the han­dle (and also in the inside of the bag, but that’s not impor­tant).  It’s one of the LL Bean bags we bought years ago in Maine at the out­let store, a store full of bags with mis­tak­en mono­grams, mis­tak­en names, or just mono­grams and names of peo­ple who for­got to pick up their orders.  I think this one says “Dylan.”  Did John give it to Joel?  Did Joel expe­ri­ence an under­stand­able moment of bag envy and sim­ply walk off with it?  The mat­ter has been thrashed out in every pos­si­ble way, with both men cling­ing in a com­plete­ly incom­pre­hen­si­ble way to this piece of canvas.

Final­ly, with the wave of a Sharpie, Joel solved the mys­tery once and for all.

Mol­ly, in the back­ground, smiled her approval.

This was our Sun­day, a per­fect scram­bled egg-bacon brunch with my sis­ter’s fam­i­ly, Jill her­self com­ing armed with her own “Awe­some Blue­ber­ry Muffins.”  They were.

Jil­l’s Awe­some Blue­ber­ry Muffins

(makes 16 )

3 cups/378g plain flour

1 tbsp bak­ing powder

1/2 tsp bak­ing soda

pinch salt

1 cup/200g white sugar

4 oz/113g butter

zest of 2 lemons

2 tbsps veg­etable oil

2 eggs

1 cup/250ml sour cream or creme fraiche

1/2 cup/125ml milk

1 tsp lemon extract

1/2 tsp vanil­la extract

Mix the first four ingre­di­ents with a fork.  In a large bowl, with an elec­tric mix­er, cream the but­ter and sug­ar togeth­er until fluffy, then add the zest and oil and beat until mixed.  Add the eggs one at a time, beat­ing between each.  Stir in the sour cream. milk and extracts until well-mixed.

Pour half the dry mix­ture into the wet and fold just until mixed.  Add the sec­ond half of the dry mix­ture and stir gen­tly until just mixed.  Fold in the blue­ber­ries and spoon into muf­fin tins lined with muf­fin paper.

Bake at 375F/190C for about 30 min­utes, until browned.

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Can you tell by the muf­fin pho­to that we had Avery back for the week­end?  What a joy it was, after a day of com­pli­cat­ed trav­el for her (yes, 42nd Street and “Grand Cen­tral” are the same stop on the sub­way; this is not an obvi­ous thing) and lots of remote advice from John, to pick her up in near­by Sey­mour, Con­necti­cut, a charm­ing lit­tle ham­let con­tain­ing a Metro-North sta­tion through which came this old-fash­ioned train.

She had­n’t eat­en since the night before, in New Jer­sey, and had spent the day traips­ing through New York on a shop­ping spree, car­ry­ing a good por­tion of her world­ly belong­ings in a bag that con­ve­nient­ly split on a train plat­form about halfway through the day.  She was ready to be picked up, fed a cou­ple of slices of piz­za in the car, and dri­ven through the green and undu­lat­ing hills to Jane’s sum­mer camp, and the “Moosi­cal”!

Yes, it was about a farm full of dis­con­tent­ed cows who refuse to pro­duce enough milk for the local ice cream bar.  I can’t make this stuff up.

Jane’s per­for­mance was noth­ing short of dra­mat­ic genius, which did­n’t stop Jill, Avery and me from col­laps­ing into our annu­al pud­dle of uncon­trol­lable laugh­ter.  It’s a fam­i­ly weakness.

A great sum­mer tra­di­tion, Jane’s musi­cal.  What next year, a group of tie-dyed veal farmers?

It was very pleas­ant to have Avery under our roof again, and no, not only so she could pho­to­graph all the recipes I’d been exper­i­ment­ing on dur­ing the week.  But there was that.

New Eng­land Clam Chowder

(serves 6–8)

50 lit­tle­neck clams

1/2 cup/118ml white wine

4 whole stems fresh thyme

4 medi­um pota­toes, peeled and diced the size of (well) dice

3 tbsps butter

4 stalks cel­ery, minced

1 white onion, minced

8 stems fresh thyme, leaves only

3 quarts/2.8 liters whole milk

1 cup/236ml heavy/double cream

sea salt and fresh black pep­per to taste

flat-leaf pars­ley to garnish

Place clams in a large bowl and cov­er with fresh, cold water.  Leave for 20 min­utes, then drain in a colan­der.  Bring the wine to a boil in a large, heavy-bot­tomed saucepan or stock­pot with a close-fit­ting lid.  Place the clams in the wine and cov­er.  Steam the clams until they open, which they will begin to do in about 10 min­utes.  Remove the lid and with tongs begin lift­ing out the clams that have opened, and oth­ers will open as you do so.  When you judge that all have opened that plan to, dis­card any that have remained closed.  If there is no grit in the cook­ing liq­uid, dis­card the thyme and keep the liq­uid to add to your chow­der.  Rinse stock­pot and dry thoroughly.

Cool clams until you can han­dle them.  Mean­while, melt but­ter in the stock­pot and saute cel­ery, onion, thyme leaves and pota­toes for 2 min­utes.  Cov­er with milk and cream and sea­son to taste.  Add clam liq­uid of you like.  Sim­mer very low until pota­toes are soft, about 15 minutes.

While chow­der is sim­mer­ing, take the clams from their shells and remove the hard “man­tle” and attached innards and dis­card them.  Rinse the clam that remains (the bel­ly and foot) and chop as coarse or fine as you like.  Add the clams to the chow­der and stir to mix.  Heat very gen­tly before serv­ing.  Gar­nish with a few chopped clams and a bit of chopped parsley.

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The after­noon tak­ing pho­tographs was sim­ply perfect.

Avery and I took a break from all this pho­tog­ra­phy and recipe-writ­ing to spend some mon­ey at the local Gap (a favorite sum­mer activ­i­ty), get an iced tea at the Star­bucks (dit­to) and pay a vis­it to the vis­it­ing ani­mal shel­ter which had parked a truck full of pup­pies in the park­ing lot.  We are suf­fer­ing from pet with­draw­al and as such could have adopt­ed the lot.  From there we pro­gressed to the pet shop where Avery cud­dled a lion­head bun­ny and moaned softly.

When we got home, our beau­ti­ful neigh­bor Tay­lor had dropped by with her lat­est Amer­i­can Girl acqui­si­tion and a num­ber of tall tales to tell, which her moth­er lat­er cor­rob­o­rat­ed.  Mum­mi­fied hoard­er lady found in col­lapsed house by Tay­lor’s res­cue dogs?  Check.  Dead local cow dropped off in Tay­lor’s dri­ve­way to be made into dog food?  Check.  Her face belies these horrors.

Tay­lor picked up Avery’s cam­era and revealed an unex­pect­ed tal­ent.  I love this pho­to of Avery.

And this love­ly image of the Aggra­va­tion mar­bles, fod­der for so many per­fect Red Gate Farm shriek­ing games.

The next morn­ing brought my New York best friend, Alyssa.  And Tina, the Won­der Dog.

Alyssa is my best friend for many rea­sons, high on the list being her under­stand­ing of the crav­ings I get for New York Jew­ish foods.  She brought bagels and every­thing to go on them from our beloved Russ & Daugh­ters, scene of our deli­cious ear­ly sum­mer lunch.  White­fish and baked salmon sal­ad, horse­rad­ish cream cheese, sable and smoked salmon.

I have nev­er been a dog per­son, but we all had to agree that this might be in part due to the extreme strange­ness of Alyssa’s pre­vi­ous canine chil­dren.  Syd­ney?  Super odd.  Lila?  Don’t ask.  But Tina?

What lux­u­ry, to sit around exchang­ing bagel plates for fruit sal­ad plates, whiling away the sum­mer after­noon giv­ing and get­ting news: of Annabelle’s uni­ver­si­ty choic­es, Elliot’s per­for­mance at the World Trade Cen­ter memo­r­i­al, plans for sum­mer vaca­tion on Fire Island, neigh­bor­hood news from our pre­cious Tribeca.  Old friends’ talk.  One of those after­noons to remember.

Tina is a most devot­ed dog.  She did not approve of Alyssa’s brief trip inside the house with­out her.

Din­ner that night was a typ­i­cal San­ford Road bar­be­cue with Anne, David and Kate troop­ing across the road.  We were hav­ing so much fun chat­ting, and such reach­ing-over-each-oth­er con­fu­sion eat­ing, that we did­n’t even pick up a cam­era.  The bar­be­cued chick­en was a delight: mar­i­nat­ed in a fun­ny mix­ture of buf­fa­lo wing sauce, Ranch dress­ing and Worces­ter sauce!  And of course corn on the cob.  And pota­to sal­ad, still warm from being made at the last minute.

The next morn­ing brought Jil­l’s fam­i­ly and the blue­ber­ry muffins, and the girls showed their annu­al inter­est in the spi­dery room in the Big Red Barn, and the seem­ing­ly end­less num­bers of Avery’s cher­ished pic­ture books that emerge from card­board movers’ box­es there­in.  Qui­et, old-fash­ioned fun.

What love­ly girls my nieces are.  Sweet Jane, near­ly ten years old now.

This is an unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly docile image of Mol­ly, but it shows her true beauty.

Tomor­row will bring John’s mom!  Sum­mer always reach­es a new lev­el of cel­e­bra­tion when she arrives, to inhab­it her cozy bed­room at the front of the house, with its barn-red spread and piles of books.  And next week, my mom, here for her annu­al birth­day bash.  It’s life, con­cen­trat­ed.  Just add water.