when the lights go out… again

Good­ness. I know our fore­moth­ers lived with­out elec­tric­ity (and in turn with­out ice, or a fan to make white noise to put them to sleep, and with­out any means to move around hot air, these three being my major require­ments for a happy phys­i­cal exis­tence in sum­mer). But they didn’t live with­out it UNEX­PECT­EDLY. I am pos­i­tive I would actu­ally have been a quite happy per­son with­out elec­tric lights or refrig­er­a­tors, were I pre­pared ahead of time not to have them. To read by can­dle­light! To await the arrival of the ice man, bring­ing his great blocks to fill my quaint ice­box, giv­ing lit­tle sliv­ers of ice to my docile chil­dren to suck through pieces of muslin cut from my castoff aprons! I could do it. But sud­denly to try to brush one’s teeth and there’s no water… because there’s no elec­tric­ity… because one’s water comes from a well?

It was all down­hill from there. One evening had been enough, espe­cially when I knew I caused it myself, run­ning the AC and dryer at the same time, naughty me. But the next day started out hor­ri­bly, and got worse. Let me explain.

I came down­stairs after our light­less night, feel­ing a bit out of sorts, even cranky, and stepped down the two steps into the kitchen to squash… a mouse. A real MOUSE. Under my foot, shod thank good­ness, but still. In dis­be­lief I turned around and lifted up my foot and there it was… still in its death throes. Unfor­tu­nately I had screamed when the foot first encoun­tered the thing under­neath it, and so poor Avery had to be wit­ness to the snuff­ing out of a mouse life. She insisted that I get a piece of card­board and bring the poor thing out­side, so I did, and we installed him under­neath a lit­tle flow­er­ing bush. Then there was the mess to clean up, hor­ri­ble. Where is my vaca­tion? I kept won­der­ing in a pathet­i­cally self-absorbed way. Why is every day spent fix­ing bro­ken things, watch­ing things get bro­ken before my eyes, waaah. I hate being a grownup. The sort of prob­lems one has, I remind myself, when one has no real prob­lems. But still.

The day sort of descended from there into a rea­son­less gloom. We repaired to the library in a sort of cocoon of sweat, and to the post office and bank and gro­cery, and to the video store, each time being greeted as we emerged with the SLAP of heavy, humid air. A desul­tory lunch, and that empty mid-afternoon when you know you’re going out to din­ner and so there is no food shop­ping, no food prep, and since it was Sat­ur­day, no lovely soaps to watch. We hung out on the ter­race feel­ing at loose ends, and then sud­denly the sky that had been blue was white, and the trees that had hung life­less in the heat were blow­ing into a frenzy, and the air that had been close and silent was whipped into a sort of fright­en­ing gale. It reminded me of my child­hood tor­nado scares, and as such was mildly nos­tal­gic and exciting!

Rain fell in a tor­rent for per­haps 15 min­utes, and I imag­ined with totally unjus­ti­fied opti­mism that the air tem­per­a­ture dropped. It was in this mis­placed spirit of hope that I took the pho­tographs of Red Gate Farm in the rain: imag­in­ing that we would be in some dif­fer­ent state when the storm was over… I ended up conked out for a half hour in a sweaty nap upstairs, to be awoken by Avery bound­ing up the steps say­ing, “Dave was here ask­ing if we had lit a fire. He smells smoke…” No, no fire. But an hour later, we real­ized there was no power, and it was but the work of a moment to inves­ti­gate up the road and find a fallen live wire, in the road. And no power for any of us. Drat.

We had made plans to meet Jill, Joel and Jane in their lit­tle town for din­ner at what Jane called adorably, “a Japan­ese steak­house.” To hear a three and a half year old utter these words, pro­nounced com­pletely cor­rectly, is really some­thing: you want to make her say them over and over. So we aban­doned Dave to his inves­ti­ga­tions and report­ings (I was relieved it wasn’t me call­ing up the power com­pany, after the night before. I could just hear the report: “It’s that crank up to San­ford Road again, sir..”) We had a com­pletely deli­cious din­ner at “Ichiro,” a hibachi and sushi bar,” for my first foray into that expe­ri­ence of a din­ner cooked with great chore­o­graphed panache on a flam­ing stove, around which we all sat in vary­ing degrees of fear. Joel kept mak­ing up news­pa­per head­lines about Avery, “Promis­ing Scholar Escapes Injury by Flames to Eyes by Pre­scrip­tion Lenses at Local Japan­ese Restau­rant…” We had lus­cious filet mignon and chicken, mixed veg­eta­bles, fried rice and noo­dles, not to men­tion a thin mush­room broth, and the only bizarre thing: an ice­berg let­tuce salad to be eaten with… chop­sticks! Such is the melt­ing pot that is the United States of America.

Great fun to be together, eat great food all of whose ingre­di­ents were obvi­ous, taste a new dip­ping sauce made with wasabi mus­tard and, I think, gin­ger. Next time I will try the sushi, because it looked fab­u­lous: intri­cate and beau­ti­ful. And there was no sushi smell, always a good sign.

We wan­dered around their dar­ling down­town area, feel­ing stuffed, and then real­ized we should let Jane go to bed and also find out if all was well in our neck of the woods. A lovely sun­set drive back to the hilar­i­ous audio­book by Sharyn McCrumb, “Miss­ing Susan,” and down our road, think­ing as we approached, “All is well! There are lights across the road!” Only they were… can­dles. Quaint and lovely, but… not a good sign. We mean­dered over to find David, Anne and Baby Katie sur­rounded by can­dles, with Dave read­ing aloud from an anthol­ogy of ghost sto­ries from the Mid­west! And you know what? Why does it take a black­out, a true emer­gency, for good friends to take the time to sit for two hours and sim­ply… chat? It was LOVELY. No sched­ule, noth­ing to antic­i­pate needed to be done, because there was noth­ing TO be done. We caught up on Katie’s achieve­ments (they change quickly between weeks four and six), Avery’s school expec­ta­tions for next year, my writ­ing class, their plans for var­i­ous house projects, all the leisurely, neigh­borly, friendly top­ics that could eas­ily have been pushed to one side all sum­mer, but for an evening with no choice but to hang out. There is a clear les­son to be learned there! But what… Cre­ate your own emer­gency, per­haps, if none is pre­sented to you by Mother Nature.

Finally I felt we were over­stay­ing our wel­come with the most relaxed new par­ents one can imag­ine, and made noises about leav­ing. Just then we heard the GLO­RI­OUS sounds and saw the GLO­RI­OUS sights of a lum­ber­ing truck with a search­light, and knew help had come. Dave and I went out to greet the guy, as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of our respec­tive needy fam­i­lies, and Dave walked us across the road with his handy-dandy windup flash­light. Avery is NOT keen on the dark, and so I lit can­dles as fast as I could, and got us upstairs to my bed­room to wait out the repairs. Avery was such a trooper, learn­ing to light can­dles, find­ing a truly com­fort­ing and famil­iar book to read… but noth­ing could dis­guise the fact that we were SMOTH­ER­ING. All those can­dles, not a breath of air. The hours ticked by. Finally around 12, Avery crawled into her swel­ter­ing bed. Then by 1:30 or so, the work­ers departed and our lights came back on. Sigh. Just air move­ment with the fan was HEAVEN.

Woke up this morn­ing to a totally dif­fer­ent mood! Every­thing seemed pos­si­ble and happy, although the day was even warmer, if any­thing. Did you know about ion­i­sa­tion and mood­i­ness? Nei­ther did I. But appar­ently some peo­ple can be affected by the state of the weather before and dur­ing a storm. Cer­tainly I was in a funk all yesterday.

In my funk, and last night dur­ing the post-mouse-murder-blackout, I thought of ways to cheer myself up. And don’t lots of peo­ple say, “When you need to get out of a blue mood, think of some­one else instead of your­self”? So I thought of my neigh­bors across the road, just as hot and sweaty and in the dark as we were, only going through it with a new­born baby. Wouldn’t it be nice to feed them? And the result, this evening, was SPEC­TAC­U­LAR! If I say so myself. One of those spon­ta­neous, deli­cious meals that owes its suc­cess as much to the com­pany and the mood of appre­cia­tive­ness as it does to the food. What is it about friends whose con­ver­sa­tion is always intel­li­gent but never tor­tured, who require only about 5 min­utes’ catchup after a 6-month sep­a­ra­tion to feel nor­mal? They are irre­place­able, and mag­i­cally, this sum­mer there is one more of them. Long live Katie.

But the food was lovely. Very sum­mery and light, and involv­ing almost no last-minute hot stove or oven. You can boil the corn early in the day, and bake the fin­ished corn dish just at the end.

I’m a huge fan of Pen­zeys spices, and with a shop in my sis­ter and brother in law’s home­town, I’m happy to rec­om­mend it to you. All in all, a good sum­mer menu for a hot day. And a lot of it you can buy at your local pro­duce stand, which always feels good.

Herbed Grilled Pork Ten­der­loin
(serves 6 at least)

2 pork ten­der­loin, mem­branes and fat removed if you like
Pen­zeys “Fox Point Sea­son­ing” (shal­lots, chives and scal­lions)
Pen­zeys “Old World Sea­son­ing” (an amaz­ing com­bi­na­tion of paprika, salt, sugar, cel­ery, gar­lic, onion, black pep­per, pars­ley, dill, car­away, turmeric, dill, bay leaf, mar­jo­ram, thyme, savory, basil, rose­mary!)
juice of 1 lime
splash olive oil

Place ten­der­loins in a Ziplock freezer bag with all the other ingre­di­ents and slosh them around. Let mar­i­nate in a cool envi­ron­ment until ready to cook. Pre­pare grill to 400 degrees and cook on each side for about 10 min­utes for medium-ish (pink­ish in the mid­dle), or longer if you like. Let rest for a cou­ple of min­utes and then slice thick, on the bias.

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Another Great Bean Salad
(serves 6)

1 cup shelled cooked edamame (soy beans)
1 soup-size can pinto beans, WELL rinsed and drained
hand­ful sugar snap peas sliced into small bites
1/2 red onion, diced
1 cup cooked drained lentils
2 tbsps wasabi horse­rad­ish may­on­naise
juice of 1 lemon
sea salt to taste
2 tbsps olive oil

Could it be any eas­ier? Mix every­thing well, and enjoy. It’s got every­thing to rec­om­mend it, this salad: fiber, what­ever won­der­ful things the super­food soy offers, lentils, the crunch of sugar snap peas, the snap of wasabi. Lovely.

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Scal­loped Corn
(serves 6)

6 ears corn, lightly boiled, ker­nels cut off
3 cloves gar­lic, finely minced
1/2 cup light cream
hand­ful grated pecorino or parmesan

Spray a pie plate with non­stick spray. Scat­ter half the corn and then scat­ter the gar­lic, then scat­ter the rest of the corn. Pour cream over and sprin­kle with cheese. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 min­utes. Heav­enly aroma!

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Mar­i­nated Grilled Veg­eta­bles
(serves 6)

1 red pep­per, 1 orange pep­per, 1 yel­low pep­per, quar­tered and de-seeded
1 bunch aspara­gus
2 large flat mush­rooms, cut in thick slices
large bunch broc­col­ini
1/2 cup olive oil
2 tsps gar­lic salt
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tbsp sea salt
fresh ground pepper

Put veg­eta­bles into a Ziplock freezer bag with all other ingre­di­ents and slosh around, as you did the pork ten­der­loin, until nicely mixed. Leave in plain sight as you cook every­thing else and squish the ingre­di­ents when­ever you pass the bag. Cook at the same tem­per­a­ture but in less time as the pork ten­der­loin: about 400 degrees for aout 15 min­utes. Stir often as they cook.

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Well, enjoy your Sun­day evening. We are grate­ful for (in this order): fam­ily and friends (absent and present), good healthy food, library books, chip­munks and ground­hogs, and… Thomas Edi­son. That’s the guy, isn’t it?