the best of times

In a sum­mer that’s as crowd­ed with action as they all are, I’m savor­ing a rare moment of total soli­tude.  The sun is shin­ing, the hors­es are snuf­fling in the mead­ow, and I can hear a bit of lunchtime activ­i­ty across the road, but I’m all alone.  John and Avery have defied the gor­geous day and have tak­en them­selves off to see a movie, promis­ing to bring me any left­over popcorn.

Part of my alone­ness is regret­ful, because John’s mom has gone home.  The two weeks of her vis­it flew by in whirl of activ­i­ty.  In a blur of heat the first few days, we vis­it­ed the farmer’s mar­ket for divine­ly sweet heir­loom tomatoes.

These, along with incred­i­bly fresh local goat cheese, chives and cucum­bers, made a gor­geous salad.

But the real win­ner of the mar­ket was a bot­tle (too small!) of Tus­can Herb olive oil, from the local Olive Oil Fac­to­ry.  As the love­ly stand­hold­er explained, “The olive oil is bot­tled local­ly and fla­vored with herbs grown local­ly, and then I sell them here at your mar­ket.  You’re help­ing every­one!”  Fra­grant with oregano, gar­lic, rose­mary and basil, it made the per­fect salad.

John’s mom’s sum­mer vis­its always fol­low the same dear pat­tern.  We scrub and arrange and beau­ti­fy, in advance of her arrival, and head to the sweet local air­port to pick her up.  This time it felt odd not to have Avery with us — still in Wash­ing­ton on her polit­i­cal adven­ture.  We set­tle her into the cozy guest room.

The next day we gath­er up our library books and head out to the ter­race for the first of many sun­lit after­noons, with the birds and chip­munks and squir­rels pro­vid­ing dra­ma, and the occa­sion­al small air­plane buzzing over­head.  We begin talk­ing about all the things we’ve been stor­ing up since we last saw each oth­er — what’s hap­pen­ing in Iowa, our plans for the cook­book, what Avery’s been up to in Wash­ing­ton, what to have for din­ner.  We bask in the illu­sion that there will be time to talk about every­thing, that it will go on for­ev­er.  It’s a very peace­ful spot.

She is the kind of lis­ten­er who makes you feel that every­thing you think is worth say­ing!  Whether we’re chop­ping gar­lic togeth­er, gro­cery shop­ping togeth­er or fold­ing laun­dry, my life feels more inter­est­ing and worth liv­ing than it does with­out her.  When she comes with us to the ten­nis court — just to watch and offer encour­age­ment — we play bet­ter!  And she’s there to enjoy the Grumpy Old Men on the adja­cent court.

Final­ly the day came to get Avery back.  John’s sis­ter planned a busi­ness trip to give her an extra day to come see us, hap­pi­ly over­lap­ping with Avery’s home­com­ing.  Cathy falls under the spell of the ter­race too.

Off we went to pick up Avery in Bridge­port on a blind­ing­ly steamy day, and to bring her home.  How heav­en­ly to have her back.

What we did not know on that hal­cy­on first day was that she had gone to Wash­ing­ton with a case of Lyme dis­ease.  When she sent me a mes­sage to say she had a headache and was exhaust­ed, I’m afraid I put it down to the crazy round of activ­i­ty that was her life in DC, on her two con­sec­u­tive week-long intel­li­gence and pol­i­tics con­fer­ences.  In those two weeks of sim­u­la­tions, she was Vice-Pres­i­dent man­ag­ing a West Coast pow­er black­out, a prison riot and sev­er­al downed jum­bo jet­lin­ers (and was vot­ed Pres­i­dent in the next elec­tion!), and then she was cam­paign man­ag­er for a Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, which involved writ­ing a com­plex health­care bill and field­ing nasty attack ads from the oppo­nent, and even­tu­al­ly see­ing her can­di­date win the elec­tion.  Sev­en­teen-hour work days, all with Lyme disease.

We final­ly got her to the doc­tor and on a regime of pills, thank good­ness.  But she pow­ered through the cri­sis with admirable devo­tion to duty.  Think what she could accom­plish run­ning on all cylin­ders!  The mind boggles.

Hap­pi­ly, she regained her health and appetite long enough to tuck into (and pho­to­graph, of course) her grand­moth­er’s gift of lemon bars, brought as car­ry-on lug­gage all the way from Iowa.

How won­der­ful to have her home to cap­ture all the love­ly things going in and out of our kitchen, this time a fresh crab sal­ad for lunch.

Fresh Crab Salad

(serves 4)

8 ounces/226g  fresh lump crabmeat

1 small or 1/2 large red or orange pep­per, diced small

2 stalks cel­ery, diced small

zest and juice of 1 lemon

2 tbsps mayonnaise

fresh black pepper

hand­ful chives, minced

Place the crab and pep­pers in a medi­um bowl.  Mix the lemon zest and juice with the may­on­naise and pep­per.  Toss with the crab and pep­per, then sprin­kle over the chives.  This sal­ad is love­ly with lit­tle crack­ers, toast­ed baguette, any­thing crunchy.

Our cook­book, “Ladle to Lens: A Col­lab­o­ra­tion in the Kitchen,” is well under­way, with its own Face­book page!  Do go, vis­it, and leave us a com­ment.  We are begin­ning the search for a pub­lish­er now.  We are grad­u­al­ly real­iz­ing — with the help of var­i­ous din­ner and lunch guests who see the process — that the tran­si­tion from fresh ingre­di­ents to fin­ished dish, then from pho­to­graph to din­ner table, is absolute­ly pure.  Noth­ing is doc­tored to make it look unnat­u­ral­ly pret­ty.  So many food pho­tog­ra­phers manip­u­late what’s on the plate to achieve a mirac­u­lous (and false) image, that I am hop­ing our project will stand out for its honesty.

Final­ly there came a cold, rainy day and Avery, John and his mom decid­ed to take them­selves off to see a movie in a near­by town.  I seized the oppor­tu­ni­ty to stay home alone, put­ter around the emp­ty house, and even be respon­si­ble for what’s usu­al­ly John’s job: grilling the din­ner!  For this feast of bar­be­cued chick­en, no side dish would do but:

Grand­pa Jack­’s Grilled Pota­to Parcel

(serves 4)

1 stick/112g soft­ened butter

4 large or 8 small pota­toes (Yukon Gold or plain red will do)

1 Vidalia (sweet) onion

Fox Point Seasoning

fresh black pepper

Lay out a very large sheet of heavy duty alu­minum foil on the counter and smear soft but­ter over an inside square about 12 inch­es wide, leav­ing plen­ty of emp­ty space around the edges.

I like to peel the pota­toes (John would rather I did­n’t).  You can choose.  Then slice them quite thin, to your lik­ing.  Slice the onions the same thickness.

Arrange a lay­er of pota­toes on the but­tered foil, top­ping with a lay­er of onions and a sprin­kle of Fox Point and black pep­per.  Dot with pieces of but­ter.  Repeat until you run out of ingre­di­ents.  Bring two edges of the foil togeth­er and crimp the edges to make a seam.  Crimp the two result­ing ends, mak­ing a large, flat par­cel with one top and two side seams.

Heat your grill (or oven, for that mat­ter) to 425F/220C.  Place the par­cel inside tak­ing great care not to pierce the foil (hence the heavy duty foil).  Grill/bake for about 45 min­utes.  Obvi­ous­ly you can­not check to see if the cook­ing is going well because it’s impor­tant not to pierce the foil.  It’s a bit of an adven­ture!  Open and enjoy.

(They are pret­ti­er before they’re cooked!)

As these cooked, I rel­ished the qui­et late after­noon on my ter­race, because as soon as every­one else had gone off to the movie, the sun came out!  I sat alone, watch­ing the huge maple tree’s leaves drip slow­ly dry in the heat.  Our solar-pow­ered Queen Eliz­a­beth found the strength to wave her hand at any­one who might pass by.

Our super neigh­bors, Anne, David and Kate (and even sis­ter Alice!) have been in res­i­dence across the road, on and off.  David and John have ambi­tious plans for the not-so-charm­ing­ly-derelict mail­box­es that have graced our lit­tle road for prob­a­bly a cen­tu­ry.  Yank ’em out and start over is my advice, but they think a spot of restora­tion is in order.  Watch this space: men and pow­er tools.

Just now, this qui­et and bright after­noon, Tri­cia stopped by with her usu­al unbe­liev­ably gen­er­ous bas­ket of veg­eta­bles from her gar­den, and an even nicer gift, Rol­lie the Third, come for a visit.

Rol­lie is a real farmer’s son (and grand­son) and as such was very keen to see what trac­tors I might have on hand.  Anx­ious not to dis­ap­point, I opened up the Lit­tle Red Barn and intro­duced him to Quin­cy, the ancient Land Rover.  Kate came along, and it turned out that Quin­cy was a very pop­u­lar des­ti­na­tion.  Two hap­py lit­tle kids.

Sum­mer would not be com­plete with­out reunit­ing with Olimpia and Tony, of course, who made the long dri­ve from upstate to have lunch with us.  The chick­en burg­ers looked even more deli­cious than usu­al on Olimpia’s gift to me, a gor­geous glass platter.

The burg­ers were fur­ther enlivened by Olimpia’s home­made pesto, rich with basil, pars­ley and spinach.  Her Ital­ian touch is some­thing I can­not man­age to repli­cate.  It’s typ­i­cal of Olimpia that even as a guest, she con­tributes the bit to the meal that makes it sing.

We sim­ply sat all after­noon and vis­it­ed.  We heard tales of their recent Ital­ian adven­ture along the Amal­fi coast, and their even more recent sojourn to Prince Edward Island.  Tales that made Red Gate Farm seem a bit tame, but we would­n’t have it any oth­er way.  A love­ly day.

And then…kittens!

We have wait­ed all sum­mer to hear from the shel­ter about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fos­ter­ing, as Avery does near­ly every sum­mer.  (I had such fun read­ing these old posts, even though the blog tran­si­tion to Word­Press a few years ago lost ALL the com­ments and pix­e­lat­ed the pho­tos.  Nev­er mind, it’s the words that count.)  The shel­ter lady tor­ment­ed us with email exchanges like this:

“Would you be inter­est­ed in fos­ter­ing a moth­er and five nurs­ing kittens?”

“YES!”

“Mon­day could be the day for you to pick them up!!!”

Except that it WAS­N’T.  For sev­er­al Mon­days and at least one Fri­day, we were wound up to a fever pitch of excite­ment, only to be told there weren’t any kit­tens who had been “cleared.”  For take­off, I won­dered?  No, for a pro bono vet vis­it to deter­mine that they were virus- and flea-free.

Final­ly this week, the hot­ly antic­i­pat­ed email came.

“How about 4 o’clock today?”

It was but the work of a moment to gath­er up the kit­ty prison and dri­ve off.  An hour lat­er, we were home with a nurs­ing mom and four week-old kit­tens.  On the jour­ney Avery had read aloud from the man­u­al the shel­ter gave us.  “We should wait two to three days to han­dle them, it says,” she read. Sure.

There are two lit­tle black ones, a gin­ger one, and a mul­ti-col­ored crea­ture that looks more like a fer­ret or a duck­ling than a cat.  After much dis­cus­sion, we have named the mom Ivy.  She is a teenage mom, whose anx­ious eyes tell of the hor­ror of the last few weeks of her life, preg­nant and alone, in the wild.  The fam­i­ly were left on the doorstep of the shel­ter, in a box.

She is calm­ing down, grad­u­al­ly, although she still greets us with occa­sion­al pro­tec­tive hisses.

The two lit­tle black ones have been named Dar­cy and Dick­ens, and they are pret­ty much unbe­liev­ably adorable.

The smudgy one is called Mul­der.  Some of you, dear read­ers, will know what this means.

Can you just believe the charm of this fel­low, tucked between his moth­er’s toes?

And then there is Rip­ley.  There are no words, really.

Even though Ivy copes valiant­ly with the almost-con­stant demands for nurs­ing (they will nurse upside down while she stands at her dish and tries to eat) and the mewl­ing and rolling about of her infants, there is also a sur­pris­ing­ly long list of tasks for her humans to per­form as well: reg­u­lar deliv­er­ies of wet food and clean water, chang­ing out the news­pa­per and soft pad on which they sleep, clean­ing Ivy’s lit­ter box (a favorite place for her to sleep, so far, my the­o­ry being it’s too tall for her babies to climb over the edge and get to her).

Kate came over to won­der at them.  “Why is Ivy in the lit­ter box?”  “I think she needs some mom-alone time, Kate.”  Pause.  “But she’s the mom­my, and they’re her babies.  She can’t have alone time.”  On her moth­er Anne’s behalf I point­ed out that every­one, even moms, needs alone time.  She was skeptical.

It was hard for John’s mom to pack up and leave them, I mean “us.”  We cooked one last deli­cious din­ner of grilled scal­lops, mar­i­nat­ed in my pre­cious Tus­can herb olive oil and lime juice.

John’s mom flew away.  To con­sole our­selves on her absence, Avery and I drove up to see Jane in her sum­mer-camp play, “The Mat­tatuck But­ton Fac­to­ry,” a musi­cal, mind you, all about labor dis­putes and com­plex dis­cus­sions of work­ers’ rights and choic­es in fas­ten­ers, set to music.  I know.

My sis­ter and I got into our usu­al trou­ble when­ev­er we’re audi­ence mem­bers togeth­er: uncon­trol­lable laugh­ter.  At least this time it was jus­ti­fied and almost appro­pri­ate, and Avery joined in.  Jane was superb, of course.  Nev­er mind that the enor­mous but­tons com­mis­sioned by a local giant (I know) did­n’t have holes.  It’s theatre.

August has reared its beau­ti­ful head now, and we’ll see what adven­tures the next month has in store for us.  As long as it goes by slow­ly, I’m not choosy.