This has been a  stressful year full of home repairs and upgrades, not to mention the state of our country. My cooking has suffered as I am often too tired to conjure up an artful meal. That means dinner is scrambled egg tacos, grilled cheese sandwiches, grilled salmon or other ‘I can make this in my sleep’ dishes. I’m looking forward to a supper of ricotta pancakes.

 Our meals are simple, but I want them to look and taste appealing so our bison chili is garnished with grated cheese, cilantro and crumbled corn chips. Sandwiches come with a salad of arugula, lettuce, pears and walnuts. Or sometimes simply with carrot sticks and a pickle. Occasionally I’m appalled that I’ve made a beige dinner, i.e. sauteed chicken with roasted potatoes and cauliflower. Oh well.

I’ve taken a tip from Zoë and make a larger than usual quantity of a dish like green chilé so we can have instant meals when the going gets crazy. I try to have several containers of cooked Rancho Gordo beans in the freezer for quick tostadas or a roasted sweet potato stuffed with beans, cheese and pico de gallo.

In all the chaos I can still get inspired by a sudden desire for apples or a half-remembered recipe for cranberry muffins so I’m encouraged that I haven’t lost my cooking mojo. I look forward to our annual Christmas Eve dinner with friends and to my sister Susan’s Christmas feast. Hopefully our household woes will be over in the new year. Onward!

With our cold nights and bright chilly days my tastes turn to foods of the fall. Tart apples, squashes, grains and warm spices. I’ve been dipping into my many cookbooks revisiting recipes I’d forgotten. I use the New York Times for new recipes but there are treasures in all those books. And I find pleasure in reading  notes in the margins from past experiments and recipe revisions. Sometimes I had written for whom I had made a particular dish and that sends me into memories of evenings around our table with friends.

This recipe is somewhat adapted from The Breakfast Book by Marion Cunningham of Fannie Farmer fame. I love her down to earth comments, as here, where she suggests using your hands to mix the stiff batter. Try these with whole wheat flour. You’ll hardly notice and will be adding to the nutritional value. I used golden wheat flour, a whole grain. For apples, I diced unpeeled Cosmic Crisps. Makes sixteen – eighteen muffins. The recipe is easily cut in half.

Apple Muffins

Combine two cups golden wheat, whole wheat, or unbleached flour, 3/4 cup brown sugar, two teaspoons baking soda, two teaspoons cinnamon, one teaspoon salt. Stir in two large eggs, beaten slightly, ½ cup safflower or other vegetable oil, two teaspoons vanilla. This makes a thick batter.

Add four cups diced apples (about 3 largish), one cup walnuts, and one cup raisins. Use your hands to mix well to distribute the fruit and nuts.  Spoon into sixteen greased muffin cups, filling them almost full.

Bake at 325° for 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. 

by Mimi Hedl

Much time has passed since I’ve talked with you. We’ve gone from a drought-filled summer to a monarch migration, the last of the monarchs passing through in early November. Luckily we still had nectar plants for their journey, thanks to the tithonia, (Mexican sunflower) African tuturu, white cosmos and the beloved zinnias. Usually many species of the native asters provide fuel for the monarchs, but our severe drought reduced their brilliance and many of them bloomed later than usual.

After we dig the garlic in early July, we have sixty empty square feet. In years past, we’d sow bean seed and late cucumbers and zucchini. Now with different needs, supplying beauty and nectar becomes a priority. No doubt this beloved earth of ours gave the monarch, buckeye, sulphur, blues, pipe vine swallowtail and many other butterflies the energy they needed to carry on. The head gardener and I stood by in amazement as these flower seeds germinated and prospered, with no help from irrigation, just that underground river I speak of with respect and appreciation.

We added more straw to these flowers as they grew, hoping to fortify them against the drought, an extra layer of protection, like a down vest in the winter. We couldn’t see what went on underneath the surface of the soil but my imagination certainly painted pictures of an underground world maintaining order for the plants above ground. The head gardener only rolled her eyes when I waxed poetically, which is my nature, but not appreciated by many except me!

Of course not everything prospered as the drought dragged on and on. The tomato plants tried to leverage their losses by abscissing the bottom leaves, a fancy botanical word for dropping leaves. It was sad to see all the dried up leaves but encouraging to see tomatoes still forming, ripening, and peppers simply going crazy. We’ve never had such a pepper crop! They can survive dry conditions and obviously thrive too.

The drought allowed us time to observe how everything dealt with this summer. We didn’t have much to process in the kitchen. Drying peppers, herbs, tuturu flowers became easier because of the intense heat. These lessons will come in handy as the climate continues to change and we need to adapt. Letting the plants adjust to the water shortage showed me each variety’s strengths and weaknesses. I cataloged those  points.

The sweet potatoes have never been more beautiful or prolific. Because they were grown in the container garden, in a wooden box, one foot wide by two feet long and one foot high, the voles didn’t dig their way through the soil, spoiling the potatoes as they usually do in the regular garden. These boxes have no bottom to them, so they roots can go as deeply as they need to for the roots to pump up water and nourishment.

The highlight of the season came in early autumn, when a friend brought Lilly, a researcher and part of Missouri Prairie Foundation, to Strawdog to tag monarchs. My friend, Gen, has been here during other migrations and has seen the scores and scores of monarchs hanging from the trees as they bedded down. On that mid-October day the monarchs were plentiful enough for the three of us to tag thirty in short order.

It was such fun to watch Gen and Lilly both go after the flitting monarchs. They’d throw their net over the monarch, then flip the net to prevent an escape. They’d come over to me, sitting in the shade, with clipboard and spreadsheet. They’d carefully reach into the net. With their first and second fingers they’d clasp the butterfly with wings upright, around its thorax. Carefully pull them out of the net while I had a tag with number on the tip of my finger to hand off so they could place it on the ‘mitten’ shaped scale on the left side  of the outer wing. Phew!!! A lot of explaining, a picture would make it easier, but we were so excited to be doing it all we didn’t take time to take photographs until the last tagging.

Before they released the butterfly, they’d again, carefully open up the wings so we could see if it was a male or female. (The two black dots on the lower inside wings say it’s a male.) I’d record the sex and we’d cheer as the butterfly was released. It was such a success Lilly said she’d like to bring some entomologists here next year and could she come back to visit? How delightful to meet a new friend, in tune with what I do here on Strawdog.

With a high today of 36° and a ‘feels like’ 18°, it’s time to take down the screen on the front door. It’ll be easier to haul in wood and a sure sign we’ve entered another season. I look forward to bedding down the gardens, feeding the birds, and watching the deer lope through the fields. Winter naps are another favorite with dreams of what next spring may bring.

I’ve been waiting for Mimi to send her essay and finally asked her if she had written anything. “But Barbara, it’s your turn.” Uh-oh. I guess I imagined I wrote a post. I write a monthly column for our local paper, The Redstone Review, and assumed I’d done a blog post. Oh well, here I am on a beautiful fall day ready to write to you.

We’ve had lovely weather with warm days and cool nights. The clear, raking light reveals every detail of the ponderosas and the rocky hills across the way. Like we’ve had our eyes washed. This is my favorite season. I treasure the languor of these fall days. We enjoyed a wonderful rainy day last week. The grass is turning green again. The chamisa is putting on a show too.

We have ventured to the mountains for glorious golden hikes in the high country aspens. We have gone to the Caribou open space trails near Nederland and after hiking had lunch at a local bakery. We ate a Southwestern Quiche made with a corn tortilla crust. I had to try this in my kitchen.

For the crust:

Lightly oil a comal or heavy skillet and soften 6 – 7 corn tortillas. Line a pie dish with them – one in the center, then overlapping others around the edge.

 Roast 2 – 4 poblanos or other chiles like Anaheims. (I do this right on the gas burner. Or use a grill or the broiler.) Peel and deseed and cut into one-inch pieces. Sauté a medium sized red onion, chopped, in a tablespoon olive oil or butter until softened and translucent. Add a ½ teaspoon salt.

Make the quiche mixture: In a measuring cup combine three large eggs and enough milk or half and half to make 1 ½ cups. Whisk in a bowl until well combined and lightened. Add half a cup grated Monterey Jack, cheddar or gruyere. (3-4 ounces.)

Spread the onions and chiles in the tortilla shell. Pour over the egg/cheese/milk mixture.

Bake at 350° for 40 minutes or until the center is just barely jiggly. Cool for ten minutes before slicing. Garnish with chopped cilantro.

We have done some household maintenance having a heat pump furnace installed, buying a new washing machine and new tires for the Honda. Yikes. How come all these necessary repairs come at once?

I’ve been relishing the last of the summer veggies making ratatouille, (go to Summer Treasures in the Search bar on the right for a recipe), and salads with the last of the eggplant, peppers, green beans, cukes, tomatoes, and zucchini from the farmer’s market. My tomato plants are slow to ripen their fruit. And I’ve discovered the remains of partially eaten  tomatoes stolen by a rock squirrel. I hope to still get a few before the weather turns cold. Meanwhile I’ll bask in the golden glow of a Colorado fall.

by Mimi Hedl

In these dog days, the garden scenes change daily. The once ever-present gray-headed cone flowers have become seed for the finches; the tiger lilies in their brilliant orange, drop petals. As I survey the landscape in quiet moments, I lift my head to the sky, the clouds, watch the turkey buzzards soar high above, see the cardinals flit towards shade in the shrubs and feel grateful I was asked to care take of this piece of earth. I take this responsibility seriously, as we do when we raise a child. Over 43 years I’ve watched it change from a hay field to three acres with more biodiversity than imaginable.

Since I can’t keep up with housekeeping chores inside I go with the motto: “My house is clean enough to be healthy and dirty enough to be happy”. I don’t pretend to have control over the garden chores either.  I drive to and fro on these hot July days and notice other gardens. Many look abandoned, unloved. Weeds grow tall, plants have died, and no gardener’s in sight. Only the most dedicated keep up. I say the names of the weeds growing and calculate how much seed each one will produce, how easy it would be to cut them down. Then I realize my observation is unfair. Who knows what kept the hopeful gardeners from carrying on the work, what other passions claimed their time, or any multitude of reasons. I can’t claim innocence in this department. Just this summer I began tackling a problem I should have addressed years ago – rogue garlic.

We grew 1000’s of heads of garlic in our early years. We rotated crops, so garlic grew everywhere. There’d always be those few heads we missed and if we remembered, we’d dig those too, bonus heads, we’d call them. I’d plant garlic around each new fruit tree, near the berry bushes and who knows where else. Well, I do now, because suddenly I started noticing where they were reproducing. Like I said, EVERYWHERE.

Why is it that when we finally notice something we’ve ignored we become compulsive and have to act, immediately?  If the garlic hadn’t produced seed heads, they’d still be happily reproducing, as it’s the seed heads that announced the rogue garlic to my distressed eyes. If you’re not acquainted with the life cycle of garlic, here’s a short explanation. Each clove of garlic will make a head of cloves. If you leave that head in the earth, each one of the cloves making the head will try to make another head. So if the head has 8 cloves, 8 heads of garlic could grow in that space. Talk about the miracle of the loaves and fishes, this one a big coup for garlic.

If that wasn’t enough to ensure garlic immortality, most garlic varieties will produce a seed head. Sitting on top of the garlic stalk you’ll see a fat, round, ball with small seeds, each seed about 1/3 the size of one kernel of unpopped corn. And you wonder how many seeds are up there? Oh, anywhere from 20 to 50, sometimes even more. The attentive gardener won’t allow this seed head to live. Once the head begins to form, the enlightened gardener nips it off and uses this garlic scape in summer cooking, the power of garlic to control the world averted.

Once Ron developed Parkinson’s and wasn’t able to mow, I had to figure out a way to manage our homestead. I stopped mowing large areas and made paths through the three acre homestead. Of course this meant that anything that wanted to grow, could. We used to joke about mowing being Missourians favorite sport because so many folks religiously mounted their riding mowers and mowed acres and acres of grass. This hobby has one benefit – nothing but grass can grow in those areas.

I dealt with one emergency at a time. Always something trying to take control, be it wisteria, tansy, mints of all varieties, bamboo, fire on the mountain – I’ve battled them all. Some took years, like bamboo. Others required a watchful eye over the summer and into the autumn.

I had congratulated myself this spring because I had no aggressive-plant-emergency and could concentrate on the equivalent of sweeping and dusting. How foolish, foolish of me. As my daughter would say, I cursed myself. That period of pruning and lovingly weeding seems like a dream, as soon thereafter, I noticed the rogue garlic. Not in one spot, not in two or three spots, but in so many spots I felt dizzy. I tried to calculate how many plants I could dig in one session before I’d even put a fork in the ground.

Because I was impatient, I tried pulling out the heads. We’d had lots of spring rains and the heads came out easily. About 20 heads into the project, I noticed there were tear-shaped garlic “heads” next to the small head of garlic. I know this is way too much info for the non-gardener, but this is another sneaky way for the garlic to insure its survival. If I hadn’t paid attention, I wouldn’t have seen these other garlics, they would’ve remained in the soil, and next year I would feel crazy because there’d be just as many rogue heads of garlic as this year.

This slowed down my work. I had to dig out each head, slowly looking for the garlic tear drops, with no stalk, only shriveled leaves and the tear the same color as the soil. I started my routine at about 5:30 am and worked for an hour each morning. I had a carpenter’s apron around my waist so I could drop the tears into the pocket. Each garlic head with stalk and topset went into a pile. I tried not to look at how much I had to do, but I did find myself counting, with some dread, bordering on panic. “I’ll never finish the job!” I’d say in my teenage voice.

I kept up this routine for several weeks, storing all I’d dug in the woodshed for later attention. Then, with my sharp pruners, a shady spot under the sweet gum, the radio playing Democracy Now! I’d cut 100 or so seed heads, then turn the garlic the other way and cut off the garlic head, small though it was. You can see what I ended up with. Did I feel foolish? No, not a bit. If next year just as many would appear, I’ll probably scream, then get to work. It can’t go on forever.  Can it?

I’ve boiled some of the seed heads in water just for a drill and made an insect deterrent for the squash plants and eggplants. It’s pungent and I may have stumbled on a positive side to this fiasco. My plan is to boil all the heads when I have a good fire going this fall, give some to other gardeners, or let them freeze over the winter, possibly a combination of them all. Then the spent garlic can safely go to the compost pile. Without destroying the garlic’s ability to reproduce, all my work would be pointless.

Each one of us gardeners has our demon, or demons. Paying attention seems critical. Not letting plants make seed is the most effective way to control how much housekeeping we’ll have to do. I much prefer daily maintenance and not these emergencies, but the emergencies seem to come with the territory. Two steps forward, one step back.

Once I’d put in my hour in the early morning, the rest of the day had me engaged with other sights, other problems, like keeping the rabbits out of the late summer beans, or admiring the tomatillos and the salsa verde they’d provide. Will the figs mature before a frost? The pollinators always keep me entertained. How does that big fat bee get into the American bellflower?!

Zoë and Bud have June birthdays a day apart so we often celebrate with an excursion. This year we went farther afield than usual, heading to Silver City in southern New Mexico. I love a road trip especially driving through some favorite Colorado and New Mexico territory. We took I25 south and stopped for lunch at the new state park – Fisher’s Peak – where we had a picnic and short walk.

We spent the night in Santa Fe and were lucky to have an invitation from Rodney and Renee Carswell for dinner. They made a wonderful New Mexican meal of chicken enchiladas with all the fixings. We talked and talked, always finding another subject to discuss. What great old friends.

We wanted to visit the Bosque del Apache on our way to Silver City, do some bird watching and have our picnic lunch. We hadn’t planned for the very hot weather we encountered so we had an abbreviated visit to this wonderful bird paradise. Then west over the mountains to Silver City. We had stayed at the Bear Mountain Lodge years ago when it was a Nature Conservancy inn and were excited to return. Our four days were busy with trips to the Gila Cliff Dwellings, the Catwalk, City of Rocks and the fabulous Mimbres pot collection at the university museum. It was very hot and few places had air-conditioning but we hiked and saw new things.

One of the best parts of travel is coming home. Fritillary butterflies welcomed us as they flitted about the lavender blooming along the front steps.

I’ve been making simple meals, mostly salads. A favorite pairs watermelon chunks, lettuce and spicy greens like arugula and radicchio, feta crumbles, and a simple olive oil and lemon dressing.

I was out of lettuce so I made a chopped salad from the bits of veggies in the fridge. A few stalks of asparagus, some snap peas from the garden, cherry tomatoes, avocado, radicchio, feta.

Every summer I make apricot jam. Zoë has followed my example and makes and shares various kinds of jam and fruit butters – peach, strawberry, raspberry and rhubarb. We have a plethora of jam. I remember my friend Maggie who also made this annual treat. I teased her when she was reluctant to smash the seed to get the kernel that gives the jam its particular flavor.

Our diet has changed and except for a peanut butter and jam sandwich or toast and jam to accompany scrambled eggs we eat very little of the delectable spread. I love home made apricot jam, redolent of the tart fruit – the scent and taste of summer so I’ve been looking for ways to use it in other ways. I remembered a recipe in one of my Italian cookbooks for a jam tart. I made one and we enjoyed it but it was a bit sweet for my taste. These bars are made with a shortbread crust and a thinner layer of jam. Just right!

Jam Bars

Preheat the oven to 350°.

Line an 8 – 9 inch square pan with parchment in each direction leaving an overhang for easy removal of the bars. Butter the parchment. Using a Cuisinart, mixer or a wooden spoon combine one cup (two sticks) room temperature unsalted butter and 1/2 cup plus two tablespoons sugar. Add a large egg, ½ teaspoon vanilla, and one teaspoon kosher salt. Stir in 2 ½ cups unbleached flour to make a soft dough. Put one cup aside for the topping then spread the remainder in an even layer in the prepared pan. Bake at 350° for thirty minutes until lightly brown along the edges, about 30 minutes. Let cool slightly then spread 3/4 – 1 cup of your favorite jam over the crust. Add the zest of a lemon. Top with crumbles of the remaining dough and sprinkle with two tablespoons sliced almonds. Bake for an additional 35 minutes. Let cool completely. Slice into four strips then into 6 long bars. Makes 24.

by Mimi Hedl

It’s the 5^th of June, another rainy spring early morning. All the windows and doors are closed. Too wet to go out to the gardens. Feels chilly in the house so I made a pot of lemon balm tea to soothe my weary mind. Gregorian chants play on Columbia’s free form radio station, another calming remedy in these uncertain times. The weather mimics this moment in history. In forty three years I do not remember such a rainy spring. Yesterday we had a deluge. “The sky is crying” I say to myself, as I hear Gary B. B. Coleman belt out a bluesy song. In trying moments I go to primitive emotions, superstitions and see omens where none probably exist. Sometimes we feel lost. This morning I remembered my history with stinging nettles.

For some unknown reason, stinging nettle seedlings have appeared in all our container planters, in the garden beds, in the compost, in the plots with native grasses and forbs. I longed to find stinging nettles last year when I had some strange reaction to heaven knows what in late summer. What little I could find had gone to seed, no leaves available to make tea. (Did you know that nettles have a natural antihistamine? I didn’t either when we first came here to build Strawdog.)

Six years after we’d built our house, the woodshed and barn, I drew up a rough sketch of the quarter acre piece of earth that would become The Park. This Park would be an homage to all the plants I loved, organized by their uses. Because this project would sit far from the hydrant, it would be impossible to water so we had to create a humus-rich soil that could support plant life without additional water.

We soon discovered that many folks had barns filled with old straw and hay. They were only too happy to get rid of the mouse and rat poop-filled material. Ron and I just had to move it out. Ron built sideboards for our International Harvester pick-up, ‘Ol Red. We’d drive to a barn early in the morning, position ‘Ol Red under the hayloft door, and begin pushing and carrying bales and dusty straw to the edge. One of us would go down below to pile the straw so we could fit more on ‘Ol Red. We’d drive home, unload the straw on the quarter acre future Park and go back for another load.

Farmers would contact us, “Would you like some old straw?” The answer was always, YES. By the second year of collecting this mulch, I started to sneeze and get stuffy. I didn’t put one and one together for a few more years when my obvious allergy to dust screamed at me. Anyone with an allergy knows how miserable you feel when you can’t stop sneezing, your eyes water, and you can’t sleep. I felt like my body was rejecting me.

So I hit my herb books. In short order I discovered stinging nettles’, urtica dioica, magical power with its natural antihistamine. I began hunting down nettles in the fields and fence rows. I’d read the ditty, ”Nettles in, dock out, dock takes the nettles out” in English herbals and knew where the dock, rumex crispus, grew, just in case. Believe me, I’ve used this remedy many a time and felt grateful to avoid the blisters I’d get from the barbs on nettles. I carefully picked leaves with gloved hands every morning to make a bitter tea I’d drink morning and evening. I cut back the nettles so I’d have leaves all spring, summer and into the autumn. After six months of this treatment, with no expectation of miracles, I no longer sneezed or felt stuffed up. (This must sound like a testimonial. Well, I guess it is, though I’d like to think of it as an ode to stinging nettles, a love song of sorts.) Needless to say, I became a believer.

Since that discovery and cure, I’ve retold my story to countless people with allergies. Everyone says it takes too much time, or they don’t have nettles growing in their yard. That stops me. I realize our richness, here on Strawdog, always rested in having time to do what we wanted. Father Hunkins, a Catholic priest who befriended us because he liked Ron’s argumentative ways, once sent parishioners to us with boxes of canned food. He thought we were poor because we didn’t have anything fancy or modern. We lived with that illusion and I continue to. People don’t realize how lucky I feel. Now with my new 2013 Honda CR-V, I feel like a fraud because it’s not broken down or rough-looking, has no mechanical issues, and makes me seem like a normal consumer. I don’t know how I’ll adjust, though it will be a relief to not walk out to the vehicle every time and wonder if she’ll start.

And that’s what people the world over want, dependability, to live their lives knowing their basic needs will be provided. As I gathered the stinging nettles from the planter to put in a potato soup, some for ravioli and calzones,  amazed at the quantity of seedlings everywhere, I realized how much I learn from native people who’ve had to deal with difficult lives and make do in any number of remarkable ways. Those are the people I celebrate, along with the humble nettles, on this chilly spring morning as the skies darken with more rain.

With the unfurling pale yellow-green leaves and the powderpuffs of pink and white blossoms on the fruit trees, spring is springing up here in the foothills of the Rockies. Over a lattice of branches, a pale green haze of new leaves shimmers against the blue, blue Colorado sky. On our hillside sand lilies nestle in the grasses emerging from beneath the dried stalks of last year.

A few weeks ago two bull elk strolled up the driveway followed later by a herd of fifteen mule deer. Everyone is on the move. We occasionally have a grey fox and a skunk visit the bird feeders to scavenge for dropped seed. Two beautiful creatures. Soon we’ll have to retire the feeders as bears may be tempted by the easy food. We’ll miss the songbirds arriving on their way north and only catch glimpses of the usual residents – chickadees, finches, woodpeckers, juncos, jays and nuthatches.

And spring inhabits my kitchen where asparagus plays a central role in many meals. I add the steamed or roasted stalks to salads with endive, garlicky croutons and orange slices. We eat orzo tossed with asparagus and shrimp and asparagus tart. (Recipe at https://howilearnedtocookanartistslife.blog/2024/05/09/spring/)

I look forward to harvesting the newly planted lettuces but in the meantime use gorgeous heads of lettuce from the farmer’s market and store-bought radicchio for our daily salads.

With the lengthening days my cooking routine changes. We eat later and lighter, often having a salad or grilled salmon for dinner.  Dessert is saved for special occasions. While searching for a cake to serve to a friend who is gluten intolerant I rediscovered this in a stack of saved recipes. A lovely dessert for a dinner with friends. Adapted from Melissa Clark, The New York Times.

Lemon/Almond Cake

¼ cup olive oil plus some for the pan

2/3 cup sugar, divided

1 cup + 1 tablespoon almond meal (95 grams – I’ve taken to weighing some ingredients for accuracy)

1/3 cup quinoa flour (30 grams. I grind quinoa seeds finely in my dedicated spice grinder.)

4 large eggs, separated

2 tablespoons lemon zest and 2 tablespoons lemon juice

¼ teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 350°. Line the bottom of a 8 – 9 inch springform pan with parchment and brush paper and sides with oil. Combine a third of the sugar, almond flour, and quinoa flour and set aside. In another bowl combine the egg yolks and another third of the sugar and beat until thick and pale yellow – five minutes. Stir in ¼ cup olive oil, the lemon zest and juice. Fold in dry ingredients. Use an electric mixer or whisk to beat the four egg whites and salt until frothy. Add remaining sugar and beat until stiff peaks form, 2-5 minutes. Stir a third of the egg whites into batter. Gently fold in remaining whites. Pour into pan and bake for 30 – 35 minutes until a toothpick or skewer comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes then unmold. Serve with berries, pineapple or mango, or a fruit sorbet.

by Mimi Hedl

Watching the landscape change from winter to spring never fails to take away my breath. I wake up to Narnia each spring, emotional and grateful to walk in the magical land once again. It doesn’t last long just like falling in love. That initial impact becomes dealing with weeds, downed limbs and this year, a fire in the midst of tornado winds. My neighbor John, a man I’ve known since we came to Strawdog forty-three years ago, knocked on the front door, I was almost unable to open it because of the wind, and told me about the fire two miles away. He said, ”With this wind, it’s going to be hard to contain. Better be ready to leave.” Panic crept in. Of course I imagined the worst.

There was virtually nothing I could do but wait and worry. One friend down in Florida on vacation called, scared, her son and young family had to evacuate. I felt less worried about our homestead as I’d recently finished burning the quadrants where the native forbs and grasses grow. With no long grasses close by the house, the fire wouldn’t have sufficient fuel, especially with close cropped grasses greening up nicely.

Alas there was plenty to worry about; people’s homes, equipment, animals, escaping sparks igniting who knows what and where. The best part of this bad moment was the neighbors who fought the fire with the volunteer fire fighters, all of them, together, one with a beer in his hand the whole time, and his fire fighting gear in the other, no politics involved in this very red state. No one was hurt, no homes burned, grasses went up in flames, touching tree tops, threatening to overwhelm the fields. The next day Petra warned me there were still smoldering coals, stay watchful, she said.

The day before the winds and the fire, the head gardener and I walked in all the bare quadrants (what I call our canvasses) surrounding the homestead, sowing the last of the native flower seed. Thousands of seeds. The day was warm, 80°, and only a slight breeze to help distribute the seed more evenly. Of course I couldn’t help but talk about each of the seeds we sowed, commenting on the parachute-like seed of the blazing star, how like hollyhock seed is Bush’s poppy mallow, because it is in the mallow family… only to be interrupted with “Blah, blah, blah, just get on with it. We have all that seed to sow and here you go doing your poetry thing. We’re here to work, to get things done, not talk like ladies at a tea party.”

Ok, I think, no tea party for our Head Gardener, just work. How can she not feel the romance of the day, the sun, the promise of spring, the daffodils, how expectant the earth looks as we sow the seed. How can she not see the poetry in all parts of life? Crossing these hurdles with folks who see the world differently poses challenges. How do we adapt to each new situation when we’re challenged, and heaven knows we all face challenges like never before. Patience and creativity come first to mind. And then gentleness. Maybe a little sadness. Lots of deep sighs. Then, do what the head gardener advised, get on with it!

We sow one variety after another. She asks me, “Why can’t we dump all the seed into pillow cases, mix them up, then sow them all. That’d be a lot quicker.” I agree with her. It would be quicker. And I explain, in order to do that, all of the seed would have to have the same requirements (staying far away from any poetic language). But, I go on, some of these seeds need shade, some like dry conditions, some are tall and need to go in spaces where they won’t overwhelm other….”Ok, ok, I get it. And you know what each of these seeds need, smarty pants?” “Mostly,” I say, “yeah, I’ve lived with them for years. They’re part of the family here on Strawdog. I visualize each flower in the quadrant before we sow them. It’s intuitive at this point. I just know if it’ll be happy, because I know the plant and what each of these quadrants have and don’t have.  It’ll take several years for the seeds to produce flowers, natives grow slowly, but look at these quadrants that produce beautiful flowers now. It used to be fescue here. Imagine that.” (uh oh, I asked her to use her imagination!)

She surprises me. “That is hard to believe. Only grass here? And it just changed that fast?” I told her it didn’t seem so fast to us. Neighbors told us we were going to bake up on this hilltop in summer and freeze in winter. They chided us for our funny house, out in the middle of nothing, with no trees close by. When they’d come inside during the summer, they’d feel amazed at how comfortable it was without air conditioning. The passive solar design worked with Mother Nature making it seem odd to the locals who put their houses facing the street.

The head gardener’s curiosity encouraged me. Sometimes it only takes one question to begin to open up another person. If I move slowly, she may respond with more questions and lead us into exciting adventures, even some poetic notions. And I’ll see more of what makes her tick. I hope she stays with me long enough to watch the seed we sowed this March turn into mature plants in a few years. Maybe she’ll even learn to admire the incredible variety of seeds and see them as works of art, as I do.

Today feels like March, brisk and chilly, even have a fire in the heating stove. Sun pours into the house. I need a sweatshirt when I go outside to admire the really red deer tongue lettuce seedlings, the daffodils and emerging plants, everywhere! I know not to become excited. We had busted pipes in our trailer down in town when we moved here and Johnny Mahaney had to crawl under our rental trailer to fix the break. I let the excitement simmer, starting tomato seeds, watching the peppers and eggplants grow, ready for another cycle on Strawdog as I watch the transformation of the earth.

We’ve been living in a bit of domestic chaos aside from the national woes and concerns for our country. Our sewer line needed to be replaced and that required jack hammering the concrete floors in the laundry room and art storage area. What a mess. Then a crew dug a four foot deep trench outdoors to replace the line to the septic tank. Lots of noise and activity, then lots of cleanup. We are back to normal and I hope, finished with major home repairs.

On these cold, gloomy days full of national turmoil and worry I look to comforting dishes to cheer us up. I have many new cooking inspirations and often forget past favorites. Then the yen for those familiar flavors pops up. This fish soup had been a mainstay of my cooking, a favorite dish for company. One cold evening a simple take on the recipe seemed like just the thing for our dinner. I usually have most of the ingredients in my pantry and freezer.

Fish Soup

Makes two servings.

For the soup base: chop an onion and a head of fennel into bite-sized pieces. Sauté in a tablespoon of olive oil until translucent and starting to get tender, about ten minutes. Add a half teaspoon of crushed fennel seeds if you have them and four cloves of garlic, chopped. Stir in a small tin of crushed or diced tomatoes and two cups of water or fish stock. (I keep shrimp shells in the freezer to make a light stock. Cover with water, add some parsley stems and simmer for 20 minutes. Strain.) Bring to a boil then simmer for 20 minutes until veggies are tender.

When it’s time to eat, bring soup base to a simmer and add eight large shrimp cut into bite-sized pieces, and half a pound or more of fish chunks – cod, hake, halibut or whatever you or the fishmonger have. Cook only until done, just a few minutes. Garnish with chopped parsley. This is my everyday recipe. For a fancy version, add mussels, scallops and/or squid.

Arugula and Orange Salad

I like the sharp, sweet flavor of oranges with fennel and fish so I made this salad to accompany the fish soup. Peel an orange with a sharp knife: take a thin piece off the top and bottom then remove peel and white pith. Slice into ½ inch half-moons. Combine with arugula, avocado and thinly cut red onion. Dress with olive oil, salt and pepper. Top with toasted, sliced almonds.

Roasted Cherry Tomatoes

Deep in winter I long for the sunny taste of garden tomatoes. Alas, winter produce just isn’t the same. But the readily available cherry tomatoes are delicious when simply roasted. Halve the little orbs and spread on a baking tray lined with parchment. I do this in my toaster oven. Lightly sprinkle with coarse salt, just a couple grains on each tomato. Bake at 350° for an hour. Watch in the last minutes so they don’t burn. Store in the fridge and add to salads and pasta dishes.

Mimi recommended a banana cake recipe from “Good to the Grain” by Kim Boyce, a baking cookbook introducing whole grains like amaranth, millet and buckwheat. This recipe includes quinoa flour and is a winner. My new favorite banana cake. At Mimi’s suggestion I ground whole quinoa seeds in my spice grinder, a dedicated coffee grinder, rather than buy expensive flour.

Banana Walnut Cake

Preheat oven to 350°. Toast two cups of walnuts until fragrant 5 – 10 minutes. Watch them! Grind one cup in the Cuisinart and coarsely chopped the second cup. Grind ½ cup of quinoa seeds into flour. (Use a spice or coffee grinder.)

Cream together four ounces (one stick) of unsalted butter with ½ cup brown sugar and ½ cup white sugar. Add three ripe bananas, then two large eggs. Stir in 1/3 cup sour cream or yogurt and one teaspoon vanilla.

Fold in the quinoa flour, the ground walnuts, one cup unbleached flour, one tablespoon baking powder and one teaspoon kosher salt. Scrap batter into a buttered nine-inch springform or round cake pan. Bake at 350° for 50 – 60 minutes until a skewer comes out clean. Cool in the pan for ten minutes. Remove and top with a thin glaze – ½ cup sifted powdered sugar mixed with a teaspoon or more of lemon juice. Top with the chopped walnuts.

by Mimi Hedl

We’re snowed in, or more like it, iced in. An arctic blast moved across the Midwest and into the east Saturday night and lingered until Monday morning, dropping sleet, ice and snow leaving us with single digit temperatures, some without power and a travel advisory. As I shoveled snow off the deck, ice thickly coating the boards, my mind drifted back to my childhood in Superior, Wisconsin.

 It was a frigid winter day. I was bundled in snow pants, boots, my alpaca winter jacket, mittens and probably a scarf, tied under my chin. We’d sledded all morning and after lunch I headed back across the street to Central Park. It could have been THE Central Park, so huge, limitless, and beautiful it seemed to me. We could find anything we might possibly want in that park, swings, a baseball field, a creek that froze where we ice skated until we were frozen, hills to sled down, countless trees, magical adventures and at the far, far end of the park where it must’ve dissolved into the poorer side of the park, a small trestle where we could look down on the creek. We seldom ventured into this far away area. From a child’s perspective, it portended evil, spoiled by who knows what, always junk down there, but still a place for adventures, that children love. This time, trouble.

I’d played along the edge of the creek that afternoon with a bunch of other kids, horsing around, like we always did. Slowly we made our way further and further down the edge of the creek until it felt almost like time to go home. The light fading, my hands frozen, balling them up inside my mittens to coax the cold out. When we got to the trestle, I went down by the creek while a few boys stood up on the trestle, throwing things onto the ice, laughing and whispering. One of them shouted down to me, “I bet you won’t walk across the creek to the other side!” That seemed like a silly thing to say. We always crossed over in the wide parts of the creek where we skated, it was so narrow here, it would be nothing to cross. So I stood up and walked across. I heard the ice breaking when I was almost to the other side. I also heard the boys running away. I fell in, fell into the cold water, into a goo-like oil and started to cry. I don’t remember anyone there. I don’t remember how I got out of the icy water or how I got home, a couple blocks away. I only remember crying without stopping, somehow getting home, going in the back door where my mother helped me out of my snowy, gooey clothes. Then I was upstairs in the bathtub with hot water pouring in, crying and crying, the hot water coming forever.

It takes a frigid joyless winter day to dislodge a memory like that, one that seldom has come to me in almost seventy years. The next few days on Strawdog were cold, but the sun came out, making the icicles glisten and the world look enchanted. I made dozens of trips to the woodshed, wearing my nanospikes to keep from falling on the ice. Ron called weather like this survival weather and I did feel vulnerable. One false step and who would feed the fire? Everyone felt the same way. While my phone still worked, friends and neighbors called inquiring, “how are you doing?.” It’s encouraging to hear another voice when we feel isolated. Everyone was iced in. Nothing moved.

The birds devoured the suet. Sometimes there were four different birds taking bites out of one suet cake.  I put out another holder with suet so they wouldn’t fight so much. Of course that didn’t really work. The small birds, chickadees, nuthatches, sparrows, cardinals and snowbirds, cooperated but oh my, the jays, the woodpeckers, the mockingbirds, insisted they have the suet to themselves. They kept me entertained as I watched their dramas unfold. The bamboo jungle gym stayed active. Birds darted up and down, swung on the long bamboo string, pushed each other, puffed up their feathers until they looked three times their size.

I had to bring in the squirrel-proofed bird feeder as the ice fell so thickly into the seed, the birds couldn’t reach it. Would an umbrella protect the feeder? I’ll try it and see what crazy results I get. The Head Gardener will give me a rough time with this, but sometimes I purposely do these ‘unique’ things to get her goat.

Inside I’d walk by the rosemary and marjoram, rubbing their leaves. The fragrance buoyed me and the simple beauty of the plants did as well. It’s like having a silent friend in the house, marjoram my favorite.  I carefully took off the skins of my clementines, also fragrant, and strung them with these bamboo pieces to add cheer to the house. I’d brought up potting soil and containers before the storm and sowed the onion seeds, the red Wethersfield and the yellow of Parma. By mid-March the seedlings will be large enough to plant in the garden. Spring, just the word gives me hope.

I re-read some childhood books including John Steinbeck’s THE RED PONY. The watercolors of the horses and the landscape are beautiful and evocative of life on a ranch. I haven’t reread those stories since childhood and was shocked at how much sadness was in the stories.  After dinner and the dishes I’d lie on the sofa, watching the fire and listening to music, reading, not unlike what we did growing up on cold evenings, all of us together, quietly engaged. The fresh, cold air I’d soaked up from my outside chores, insured me a good sleep, other than coming down every three hours to feed the fire, check that the water was still running in the bathroom, flushing the toilet and getting a big glass of water, my alarm clock.

On one of the sunny afternoons I made a snow angel, remembering the one I made for Mom when she was in the retirement community, throwing a snowball up to her window so she’d look down and see me. She laughed and smiled her wonderful smile, turning me into a girl all over again. This time I looked up to imagine seeing the Head Gardener. Oh dear, her scowl and disapproval would make me want to laugh, but I hoped instead, I’d bite my tongue, and say, “Come on, make one!” and watch her stomp away. I needn’t worry. No one was going anywhere.

If you’re ever in a conversation with a group of folks, and one of them, a man in particular, happens to laugh about the time he teased a girl into crossing a creek he knew was filled with oil that was keeping the ice from freezing, you’ll know that he’s talking about me.