days of sun­shine, food, fam­i­ly and tennis

We’ve had the most peace­ful days. Long, lazy, sun­shiny after­noons with us all stretched out in the Adiron­dack chairs, books piled up on the deep arms, feet up on the crazy crooked foot­stools, end­less glass­es of sweat­ing ice water or tea, all of us inter­rupt­ed in our read­ing by the appear­ance of Gary the Ground­hog twirling peach pits or cher­ries between his lit­tle black paws from the pile of reject­ed fruit I keep rotat­ing in his lunch spot. John accus­es me of delib­er­ate­ly buy­ing “off” fruit so it gets to Gary soon­er, but that’s just calum­ny of the most cal­lous. How can I offer moldy can­teloupe to my human child? Or the con­tents of a box of rasp­ber­ries whose best-by date was clear­ly over-opti­mistic and mis­lead­ing? Two words: I can’t. So Gary gets them. And we all sit, enthralled and unmov­ing, to watch his feast. I have to tell my moth­er: he vio­lates the sacred rule of our child­hood din­ner table: he eats with his mouth open.

The after­noons are punc­tu­at­ed by Avery’s tram­po­line games: “Veron­i­ca, Veron­i­ca, Bet­ty! Bet­ty!”, based on her obses­sive sum­mer read­ing of Archie comics, while I sit doz­ing, look­ing at birds dart­ing between the eaves under the barn roof, to the steel bands on the silo: prob­a­bly more bugs that our Ter­minix con­tract is not get­ting rid of.

We’ve had the most glo­ri­ous din­ners: pork ten­der­loins mar­i­nat­ed in rose­mary, gar­lic and lime juice, grilled on the bar­be­cue and served with creamed cheesy spinach and a warm sal­ad of can­nelli­ni beans with more rose­mary and water­cress. And ice-cold shrimp sal­ad with red pep­pers and cel­ery and a hint of Tabas­co and Worces­ter­shire sauce, and tonight’s glo­ry, Avery’s absolute favorite: penne with a creamy toma­to sauce of ricot­ta and pinenuts, tossed with steamed broc­coli. You can find any of these dish­es, of course, by typ­ing them into the search box at the top of the blog. SOME­DAY I will fig­ure out an index. Sug­ges­tions for such a build­ing project always grate­ful­ly accepted!

Yes­ter­day after­noon was a mixed bag: the delight of a vis­it from Shel­ley, bear­ing gifts of home­grown herbs (choco­late mint! who knew), stacks of books by my neigh­bor’s grand­moth­er, Gladys Taber, and an inspi­ra­tional book I’ll report on when I’ve read it, that Shel­ley claims in her infi­nite gen­eros­i­ty reminds her of my writ­ing… I can take all the inspi­ra­tion and encour­age­ment I can get, so I am open. But the plea­sure of our lunch with Shel­ley was tem­pered with the rea­son for her arrival: to take Hast­ings back home. He had a good time, I think, at Camp Avery: cat­nip, baby food, chin-stroking games, late night cud­dles with Avery. But he was ready to go home. We sat out at the pic­nic table over a sand­wich lunch, lis­ten­ing to his plain­tive cries in the kitchen, “Invite me out!” They drove away in a pat­ter­ing rain, and Shel­ley report­ed lat­er that it was quite the wild weath­er ride. How kind she was to share him with us, this summer.

Last night found us at Jill and Joel’s house for his com­mand per­for­mance of spaghet­ti bolog­nese. That’s one of the dish­es of the world that appears in a thou­sand dif­fer­ent guis­es: mine with a begin­ning mire­poix of car­rots, onions and cel­ery, with whole milk and cheese and meat­loaf mix, and white wine. Joel’s is just as deli­cious but com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent, based on a sausage chock ful of fen­nel seeds, and loads of chopped toma­toes. Sim­ply divine. Almost as deli­cious are their two love­ly sprites Jane and Mol­ly, Mol­ly still trad­ing on her baby cheeks and flail­ing feet, not so talk­a­tive as her big sis­ter who is frankly… nev­er silent. Jane runs on how­ev­er many cylin­ders as the race cars she so adores, danc­ing, jump­ing, singing along to the CD com­piled by her teach­ers of all her fel­low stu­dents’ favorite songs, and she has a flaw­less mem­o­ry of whose favorite song was whose, what comes next, when hers will appear… she relates all this to us while skid­ding along the hard­wood floors, falling on her already-mas­sive­ly-bruised shins, shout­ing, “I’m OK!” before any­one can ask. Mol­ly looks on all these pro­ceed­ings with an ador­ing, uncrit­i­cal eye. Avery adds her teenage skep­ti­cism mixed with her love for her cousin, admir­ing her ener­gy, from the far, far dis­tance of adolescence.

As you can see, our days have been fur­ther enlivened by our con­tin­u­ing pas­sion for ten­nis! And for Rose­mary’s pas­sion for record­ing every­thing her loved ones do, on film (or I should say now, the dig­i­tal ver­sion there­of). Does­n’t John look like Andy Rod­dick, only hand­some? I can’t get over this pho­to­graph! He has been so gen­er­ous in his ten­nis game with me, sus­pend­ing his nor­mal­ly over­whelm­ing com­pet­i­tive streak to have, as he put it, “some fun.” Our game is noth­ing if not gen­er­ous: we use the WHOLE court, not con­tent to restrict our­selves to those sil­ly white lines that oth­er peo­ple seem to find lim­it­ing! “How far can John run?” is a con­stant refrain. He sug­gests that at some point I should learn to antic­i­pate where his ball will land, based on his rac­quet action, and that, FUR­THER, I might learn to antic­i­pate where MY ball will land based on how I hit it. I have to smile indul­gent­ly at all this. John: I can bare­ly HIT the thing. I have no strat­e­gy what­ev­er. I get sweati­er and red­der in the face, my hair escapes from its pony­tail, I chase more and more balls as I miss them and they roll under the fence. Not to wor­ry: if all this pro­duces this gor­geous image of my ath­let­ic hus­band, as well as increas­ing our heart rates, it’s worth it.

And the reward was: a per­fect­ly delec­table new soup. Now, I have to aver that this is s sto­ry sim­i­lar to my East­er sug­ges­tion for ham and bean soup. In order to get the result I did, you must begin with an entire­ly sep­a­rate dish: at East­er, the pre­lim­i­nary baked ham. For this black bean soup, you must begin with a mixed pier­rade (that fab­u­lous dish of thin-sliced mixed meats cooked on a hot stone), and sim­mer all the scraps you trim from the meat for an hour or so, with plen­ty of salt. Then refrig­er­ate the stock overnight, skim off the fat (there will be loads), and use the stock for the soup. Trust me, this sequence of dish­es is more than worth it, and you avoid all the guilt of throw­ing away those pre­cious trim­mings of duck, veal and sirloin.

The Ulti­mate Black Bean Soup
(serves 4)

16-ounces black beans, rinsed
2 tbsps pier­rade fat or but­ter or olive oil
1 cup each: chopped car­rots, chopped cel­ery, chopped white onion
4 cloves gar­lic, chopped
1 tsp dried thyme, or 1 tbsp fresh thyme leaves
4 cups pier­rade or oth­er beef stock
dash Tabas­co sauce
sev­er­al sprin­kles dried chilli flakes

to gar­nish:
sour cream
cilantro (corian­der in UK) leaves

Melt the fat or but­ter or heat the oil in a heavy saucepan. Saute the car­rots, cel­ery and onion and gar­lic till soft, then all the black beans and thyme, and pour the stock over. Add the Tabas­co and chilli flakes and sim­mer for about a half an hour. Puree with a hand blender, or puree in a Cuisi­nart if you want a smoother soup. We liked ours fair­ly chunky. Gar­nish with the sour cream and cilantro. This soup is WON­DER­FUL hot, room tem­per­a­ture or cold, although John (who got the cold left­overs) reports it was more like a dip, and would have been love­ly with tor­tilla chips. You go for it.

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Tomor­row will bring a vis­it (in the blind­ing rain, we fear from weath­er reports) from John’s (and my) dear friends Olimpia and Tony, whose mas­sive feasts for us are such hap­py mem­o­ries from our times at home. But tomor­row they come to us. And they will feast, I hope. In prepa­ra­tion, today Rose­mary and I had had that sum­mer expe­ri­ence that’s part indoor cook­ing, part free facial: slav­ing over steam­ing pots, hot oven doors, sinks full of boil­ing water: inter­spersed with fold­ing laun­dry in the laun­dry room that’s like a sauna! Here’s why: after many pow­er­less after­noons and evenings, we’ve learned the hard way: we can­not run the air con­di­tion­ing at the same that any of the fol­low­ing run: the wash­er, dry­er, dish­wash­er or tele­vi­sion. There you have it, sum­mer at Red Gate Farm: no mul­ti-task­ing in com­fort! So we worked all after­noon, hav­ing a ball I must say, and then late evening: off went all the oth­er appli­ances and ON went the AC. Not a moment too soon. But I con­fess self­ish­ly: an after­noon with Rose­mary all to myself, chat­ting, chop­ping, wash­ing and dry­ing, help­ing Avery make her first blue­ber­ry pie, dis­cussing what we’re read­ing, it’s heav­en to me, and I was grate­ful. An after­noon to cherish.

Right, the itch­ing from poi­son ivy is fad­ing as are the angry red patch­es, the air is cool and my book beck­ons. Enjoy your week­end, and… make that black bean soup. I would­n’t lie to you.