Sauer Dispositions

Poets are a heterogeneous lot. Some of us seemingly lurk in the periphery of life’s thickness, but don’t be fooled - if we’re lurking, we’re usually observing to better contribute ourselves to the whole of humanity (or, if in a less than sterling temper, to at least remark to ourselves what we think about it all). We don’t always write about the nicest or prettiest moments in life or laud the finest of another’s attributes, but we generally write about whatever “truth” we’ve witnessed and allow readers to draw their own conclusions. Most of the time we carry paper and a pen so that we can scribble some record of what we see or feel, providing ourselves with notes on which to later reflect. But we’ve been known to grab an extra napkin at the local diner and jot down our thoughts if we forgot to bring our journals along. I’ve been known to, when there was neither journal nor napkin within easy reach, scurry until I found something on which to write, yelling all the time to those around me “Don’t talk to me! Don’t talk to me!” so as not to lose a specific mental image. Some of us wield cameras, snapping away, taking photographs in order to closely study life at a more thoughtful pace than a given moment will instantaneously allow. We may be wordsmiths, but I believe our imaginations are generally larger than our vocabularies.

So it went when this picture was taken of the cabbages in Papa’s garden. The plant’s leafy fullness, revealing itself layer by layer but all the while hiding its innermost wealth, still catches my attention when gazing on this photograph. I shared the picture in an email to a dear friend, celebrated artist and poet, Merrill, who used to keep a prolific garden with her husband. She responded wondering what we do with all the cabbage grown. I filled her in on precisely what happens:

“yes, ma'am...we crock it for sauerkraut...but, to your point, that's still a lot of sauerkraut. 

my dad and I have deep and lengthy discussions about...cabbage...and what to do with it, and how to do it. we keep old earthenware crocks in our collective pantry. one point on which we readily agree is the imperative use of those crocks. after that it's "katie, bar the door" - one skirmish after another ensues. 

he likes a small chop, i prefer a larger cut. i'm very handy with a chef’s knife and prefer its use. he's affixed a sharp blade to a hoe handle which he insists does a more efficient job in chopping up all that cabbage. we chop, and disagree... chop, then disagree some more until we finally pile hundreds of handfuls of little green shards into the waiting, clean crocks. 

making sauerkraut requires packing the cabbage in salt. can you imagine the "petite guerre" this summer when he realized that he had run out of morton's table salt and i offered the notion of using my store of sea salt instead? 

over the next few weeks we check the kraut's progress several times. lifting back the leathery mother of mold capping each crock, we spoon into one pungent green darkness after another to sample - is it tart enough? 

my dad shifts his body to allow me room enough to approach the crock with my own tasting spoon: "we shouldn't have used that salt of yours. it don't taste just right." 

i reply, "papa, there's not a thing wrong with that kraut except it's chopped too small. but I think it's ready to put in a jar." 

i never take seriously our disagreements over sauerkraut. the hushed tones of our quarrels are always tempered further by a softness in his eyes as he applies himself to every step of the process. but mostly because i know that once the first killing frost has chilled the air and our garden lies in deep, naked furrows, he'll come through my back door asking me, 

"sue, will you make me some of your little kraut and bacon pies?"

Merrill wisely reminded me that I needed to savor every moment and every difference. “.... that's all there is of life... that's all there needs to be.” 

Sauerkraut and Bacon Pies

½ lb. bacon, diced
2 small yellow onions, peeled and chopped
3 sprigs fresh parsley, leaves removed and chopped
3 small yukon gold potatoes, boiled in their jackets til tender, then peeled
1 quart sauerkraut, rinsed and drained
1 tsp. whole caraway seeds
½ tsp. ground caraway seeds
freshly ground black pepper
1 stick of butter
1 box phyllo dough, thawed
1 ¼ cups sour cream

Put bacon and onions into a large skillet and cook over medium-high heat until bacon is browned but not crisp, about 10 minutes. Stir in parsley and transfer to a large bowl. Coarsely grate potatoes into bowl with bacon mixture. Add drained sauerkraut and whole and ground caraway seeds. Mix well. Season to taste with pepper.

Preheat oven to 400 F. Melt butter in a small skillet over medium-low heat and cook until lightly browned. Pour clarified butter into a small bowl, discarding milk solids.

Unwrap phyllo from its plastic wrap and immediately cover with a damp kitchen towel to prevent its becoming too dry. On your countertop, take one sheet of phyllo (immediately cover the remaining dough with the damp kitchen towel), brush phyllo sheet with clarified butter. Add another layer of phyllo dough, brushing it again with butter. Continue until your pastry is to a desired thickness. Pile sauerkraut mixture evenly into the middle of phyllo, cover with sour cream and fold dough over onto itself, sealing in sauerkraut/sour cream mixture. Brush butter onto the phyllo’s edges. Place pie onto a cookie sheet. Repeat the process until all of the sauerkraut mixture is used.

Bake until pies have flaked and browned. Serve warm with additional sour cream if desired.

While you’re munching on one of the pies, transport yourself to an earlier season:

the drone
of his opinions --
white clover

Pantry Challenge

And....we’re back, after a brief hiatus.

Pantry challenge. Making do with what you have on hand. It’s something that my neighbors Susan and Deedee have taught me in the last year. A pantry challenge doesn’t mean that you have to eat less than satisfying food. You can eat well and save a few dollars by preparing meals with what you already have in-house.

That was my mindset yesterday when I started rummaging through my kitchen looking for something to prepare, something that I could take to work for a couple of days. Among the items I put on my counter were beans, cabbage, smoked sausage, onions, garlic, vegetable juice, beef bouillon cubes, chicken broth, hot peppers, rice and an assortment of canned soups. I put the beans, rice and canned soups back under my kitchen counter and made the following (ad-libbing all the while):

A Frugal Poet’s Crock Pot Smoked Sausage Cabbage Soup

Slice and quarter heart healthy turkey smoked sausage. Sautee the smoked sausage in a little olive oil along with a clove or two of garlic.

While the sausage is sauteeing, toss shredded cabbage, diced onion, veggie juice, water, two beef bouillon cubes, chicken broth into a crock pot. I also added water, a few super chili peppers and about a tablespoon of Cajun seasoning. Turn the crock pot on a high setting (or low if you’re in no hurry). Add the smoked sausage and cook until the cabbage and onions are tender.

Quite often, such meals follow no set recipe, which allows for a little creativity on the part of the cook. The key thing is to season your soup appropriately.

My pantry challenge meal was awesome (if I do say so myself) and would likely be great with a pone of cornbread. I made enough for two quarts of soup, which should last me for at least three days, maybe four.

That’s three or four days that I don’t have to spend money at the grocery store.

If you’ve had a similar experience in preparing a pantry challenge meal, I’d like to hear from you.  Send an email to curtis@frugalpoet.com or leave your recipe and story in the comments section below.

And finally, a poem for dessert...

Why Lester Duncan Drinks

It’s hard to stop drinking
when you find a pint of vodka
under your pillow at night.
That conniving wife of mine
wants to keep me drunk.
Every time I toss out a bottle,
she buys another one and
conveniently places it
where I can find it.

As long as I’m pegged a drunkard
no one will blame her when
she leaves me.

She likes talking to that
fat tax man in town.
I figure she’s got her sights
set on him.
He’s rich, got four cars, a fine house,
and a bad heart.
Well, God Bless ‘em and
good riddance to the both of them.
Hell,
she’ll probably stick fried chicken
under his pillow.

Rusty Truck June 26, 2011

Wild Imaginations and Blueberries

My daughter and I have been berry picking twice recently thanks to the generosity of our friend, Kevin, who offered to give us all the blueberries we could pick from his property. Despite that day’s heat index of over 100 degrees, Deeds and I grabbed two pails and squeezed ourselves into Papa’s little 4-wheel drive Beemobile for the short trip “up the mountain” to Kevin’s farm. Now anyone from Mayodan knows there’s not a real mountain for miles around here, but if climbing an incline forces your vehicle to chug at a rate of 3000 RPM before it eases its effort, that’s either good enough to qualify as a “mountain” or you need to have your truck serviced...or both.

How did we fit in there?

Gardening and preserving said garden’s harvest is a summer-long family affair for us but we don’t grow blueberries. Quite truthfully, summers past have found us too busy with our own garden to accept such “U Pick” offers for free fruit and vegetables from our friends, so we’ve missed having fresh blueberries until this year. Deeds and I were simply beside ourselves with anticipation as we sped in the Beemobile past two particularly brazen farm dogs hell bent on biting our truck’s tires as we interloped on their patch of country road. We laughed as we banged our heads on the Beemobile’s rooftop when the truck’s tires found the deep ruts carved into the packed, red clay down by Kevin’s farm pond. Imagine our excitement once we entered a clearing and saw not blueberry bushes but something that much more resembled a grove of blueberry trees! Kevin’s berry bushes are ancient and beautifully wild.

Each with our own pail, Deeds and I lumbered out of the truck and agreed on who would pick where - she on one side of a row of bushes, me on the other. Our chatter quickly faded under the hot sun as we applied ourselves to the task at hand. Our intermittent exchanges dealt primarily with musing over where we’d last placed our water bottle or the precise nature of what either of us had just felt crawl across our feet while we stood knee-deep in a thicket in flip flops. Deeds gifted me with one of the best belly laughs I’ve enjoyed in a long time when she shrieked unintelligibly and bolted from the thicket swearing at an errant branch that tickled her arm, feeling ominously like a spider. We frequently wiped sweat from our brows and felt our shirts cling to our backs. We heard frogs splash in the nearby pond and listened to their throaty belches echo across the water. The sharp ping of blueberries hitting our pails’ bottoms soon turned into a soft patter as the fruit’s harvest deepened with our efforts. We tuned into the earth’s summertime song of buzzing insects, inquisitive birds and leaves rustling as an afternoon thunderstorm approached warning us to finish our work quickly. It was a hot, dirty job but more than worth the effort expended. Laboring in comfortable silence alongside my daughter was as good to me as the awesome cupcakes I baked later.

Blueberry Cupcakes with Lemon Buttercream Frosting

For the cupcakes:
2 cups fresh blueberries, divided
1 ⅛ cups + 1 tsp sugar
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
2 ½ tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 large eggs
4 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
¼ cup vegetable oil
1 cup buttermilk
1 ½ tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 425 F. Line muffin tin with foil or paper muffin sleeves.

Bring 1 cup blueberries and 1 tsp sugar to a simmer in a small saucepan over medium heat. Cook, mashing berries with spoon or potato masher. Cook until the berries have broken down and the mixture thickens, stirring frequently. Let cool to room temperature.

Whisk flour, baking powder and salt together in a large bowl. Whisk the eggs and remaining sugar together in a medium bowl until thick. Whisk in melted butter and oil until just combined. Whisk in buttermilk and vanilla until just combined. Fold egg mixture and remaining cup of blueberries into the flour mixture until just moistened. Batter should be lumpy so be careful not to overmix.

Divide batter equally across prepared muffin cups, filling each cup entirely. Spoon a scant teaspoonful of cooked blueberry mixture into the center of each cup of batter. Bake until golden and slightly firm, about 18 minutes.

For the frosting:
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
3 ¾ cups confectioners’ sugar
1 lemon, juiced and zested
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 generous pinch salt.

Combine butter, sugar and salt, mixing well. Add lemon juice, zest and vanilla extract. Beat on high speed of electric mixer until smooth and creamy. Frost cooled blueberry cupcakes.

And finally, a haiku plucked on that day -

berry picking -
my daughter wishes
herself taller

Cobbler and Aunt Grace

I’ve had my Aunt Grace on my mind lately. She passed away a few years ago, living a good, full, long life. Aunt Grace was one of eleven siblings (including my father) who grew up on a tobacco farm during The Great Depression. Being frugal was never a choice for a lot of people at that time. Frugality was a necessity. You simply had to make ends meet. You had to stretch your food dollars, rely on gardening and canning vegetables and, quite often, hunt or fish for your next meal; if you didn’t do these things, you would go hungry.

I’m ashamed to say that I don’t think I paused long enough to savor the times I spent at Aunt Grace’s table. I visited Aunt Grace nearly every weekend during the 60s and 70s. As a young boy, I suppose I didn’t think that a time would come when I would not dine at Aunt Grace’s table, which makes the memories of her and her kitchen all the more special to me.

I recall a snowy day spent squirrel hunting with my dad and uncles Bill and Herbert. I enjoyed such outings, especially when I became old enough to carry and use a gun of my own. What started out as a great adventure in my young eager mind quickly became a cold and wet miserable ordeal by the end of the day. Having no luck at finding game, the four of us retraced our steps back to Aunt Grace’s kitchen. We were famished when we sat down at the supper table, nigh starving in fact. Aunt Grace didn’t disappoint in delivering a fine frugal meal that warmed us from the inside out. We gorged ourselves on crackling cornbread, pinto beans, creases with a side of bacon. For dessert, we had peach cobbler, fresh from the oven, with a dollop of vanilla ice cream added on top. Aunt Grace knew that I enjoyed watching that ice cream melt into the cobbler.

If time travel were possible, sitting down to a wonderful meal prepared by Aunt Grace would be high on my to do list and I’d savor every moment and every morsel of food.

Okay, I’ve bitten the bullet. I listened to my sensei and bought self-rising flour. Life is about learning and this ole dawg has learned to make a decent cherry cobbler. I’ve been told to follow the cuppa, cuppa, cuppa rule when making cobbler, which translates to 1 cup of self-rising flour, 1 cup of sugar and 1 cup of milk. I followed the cuppa rule, but added ½ teaspoon each of nutmeg and cinnamon into the mix.

Here’s the recipe I used for the cobbler in the picture. 

Cherry Cobbler

1 cup of sugar
1 cup of self rising flour
½ teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup of milk
1 stick butter
1 can cherries

Directions:
Place stick of butter into a casserole dish or pan. Put the butter and casserole dish into a 325 degree heated oven. While the butter is melting, thoroughly mix the first four ingredients. Add milk, continue stirring.

After the butter has melted, pour mixture into the casserole dish. Spread cherries on top and bake for about an hour or until the cobbler is a golden brown.

Grace Departing

When it’s time for me to go,
I want to exit
like Aunt Grace
who,
being the oldest,
raised eleven siblings
after her mother died of pneumonia.
She breathed her last breath
one evening
sitting in a recliner
surrounded by loved ones,
watching a favorite TV program.
Her final words:
"No, I’m not ready for bed;
I feel so good,
I think I’ll sit here a little while longer."

The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature - October 2010 edition

Peach Pits and Pitfalls

I’ll have you know that somebody stole my peaches!  Yep, picked every single one of them straight off of the tree the week I’d begun more closely monitoring their progress.  Mind you, I didn’t count them - Papa told me years ago that counting the fruit before it ripens on a tree will surely cause it to fall off before you can eat it.  While I still don’t believe that particular tale, it’s the honest truth that every peach I’d excitedly watched begin to blush and become plump was gone.  Not one left.  I was stomping and hopping mad! 

What kind of person would do such a thing?  I can’t fathom that someone truly hungry and down on his luck would steal every piece of fruit growing on a tree promising a bumper crop.  I like to think he’d have taken just enough to eat right now and maybe a few to keep for the days ahead.  It can only be pure meanness and greed driving somebody to do such a thing.  And to top it all off, those peaches might have looked just the right color, blushing red with well developed clefts, but that fruit was as green as a gourd on the inside!  You’d think when the thief touched the first piece to throw it into whatever he planned to haul it off in he’d have noticed that it was a mite too firm - you couldn’t have bruised it if you tried hard!  Those peaches would have served a better purpose at batting practice than in a cobbler or pie.  Well, if whoever took them is reading this, remember that you reap what you sow (well, most of the time unless someone steals what you sowed).

It hasn’t taken me very long to get over this little episode despite the fumes that are nigh leaping off of the first two paragraphs written here.  A friend of Papa’s visited to gift us with an entire bushel of the prettiest peaches you’ve ever seen.  Fruit Thief, observe!  I could smell how ripe and sweet those peaches were before Sam ever made it to my back porch with them.  As I picked through the fruit while profusely thanking Sam for his thoughtful generosity, I couldn’t resist biting into one.  The peach’s warm syrup trickled down my chin and bled around my fingers.  Juicy stains bloomed all over the front of my tee shirt -  yum!  I immediately began thinking about who I could share such a bountiful gift with - Curtis usually gets the first such phone call but he’d already demonstrated that fruit cobbler ain’t exactly his forte.  Maybe he could figure out simply slicing and freezing some of them.

From where I stand on this little patch of Carolina red dirt, I see honest friends from almost every angle (as long as I’m not looking at my peach tree).  While I grilled tomatoes and other vegetables for preserving salsa, tomato bisque and marinara sauce, I used a beautiful hand-forged roasting pan gifted to me by my wildly talented friend, David Collins.  Much to the consternation of our parents, David and I gave each other haircuts when we were childhood friends.   (Do yourself a favor and visit his website at www.chjoyce.com.  There’s precious little this man doesn’t know how to make! Oh, and he’s a much better blacksmith than barber.)   Just yesterday Curtis ran barefoot across the street from his house to mine to lend me a volume of haiku written by an author who had gifted him with an autographed copy.  My new neighbor, Lisa, dropped by last night to keep me company in the kitchen while I canned marinara sauce and brought a pint of preserved pears from her mother’s pantry.  Every week I correspond with a circle of haijin (haiku poets) where we freely share our work and offer friendly, constructive critiques in an effort to become better at what we do as poets and artists.  What a wonderful world!  (unless you’re looking at my peach tree)...

Roasted Tomato Bisque

6 lbs. vine ripe tomatoes
4 cups yellow onion, diced
3 cups carrots, chopped
2 sticks butter
1 gallon chicken stock
10 ounces tomato paste
1 cup fresh basil, minced
½ cup fresh parsley, minced
2 tablespoons fresh thyme
½ tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
*1 quart heavy cream (optional)
3 cups celery, chopped
⅓ cup garlic cloves, chopped

Toss all vegetables in olive oil and liberally sprinkle with kosher salt.  Roast on a fire grill until slightly charred (can be done in a very hot oven but fire-roasting is better!)  It helps to roast tomatoes separately from the other vegetables as tomatoes produce so much juice.

Melt butter in a large stock pot.  Saute garlic about 4 minutes (don’t burn it!)  Add all roasted vegetables, except tomatoes.  Cook until tender.  Add tomato paste and cook about 10 minutes more.

Add tomatoes and chicken stock.  Toss in herbs and simmer about ½ hour.  Cool.  Puree soup until very smooth in a chinois or blender.  Be careful if you’re using a blender as hot liquids expand when whirring about and will burn you.  Strain through a fine mesh sieve to remove lumps.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  *Slowly add cream if using it.

Garnish with a good-quality shaved parmesan and croutons if desired.

And, finally, a haibun to mull over...

woven

my granny was a small bird of a woman with a sweet way about her unless crossed. she never grew to be more than five feet tall, but made up for her size with her actions. she divorced my granddaddy back when women didn't do such things, and raised two daughters with the help of her mother. she worked in the cotton mill for a meager living and took in extra sewing when she could find the work. when i was going through my divorce and the most abusive details of my marriage's demise came to light, she offered, "Let me kill him. I'm old and have lived a good life."

red stitches
across a field
of plain muslin

Contemporary Haibun Online (December 31, 2010, vol 6 no 4)
Republished in Contemporary Haibun 12, edited by Jim Kacian, Bruce Ross, and Ken Jones. Winchester, VA: Red Moon Press, 2011. 5.25" x 8.25", perfect bound, 112 pp. ISBN: 978-1-893959-099-6. $17 USD.

Frugality, Phish and Peppers

Team Frugal. I like the sound of that. In the time that I have been at Poet’s Cottage, I’ve come to realize that I’m not the only one who has taken an interest in becoming more frugal in our day-to-day spending. The other day my daughter, Alana, opened the refrigerator door, looked inside, then said, “You’ve got to stop wasting money, Daddy.”

Surprised, I asked, “What do you mean?”

“Apparently, you didn’t pay attention at the grocery store. You bought two containers of buttermilk instead of a container of regular milk and a container of buttermilk.”

“Noooooo, I’m fairly sure I bought regular milk and buttermilk,” I said, defending myself, to which Alana, delighted at having an opportunity to point out my error, reached into the fridge and produced two half gallons of buttermilk.

I made a lot of cornbread that weekend, gifting two pones to a couple of my neighbors. I dislike wasting anything, especially buttermilk.

Frugality extends beyond the kitchen into other areas of our home and, at times, can save significant amounts of money. Alana and I have been diligent in turning-off unnecessary lights. During the cold winter months, we’ve been great about keeping the doors to our home closed, reducing our gas and electric bill.

A few months ago, I received a notice from Duke Energy stating that my electric bill would be reduced by $40 (I’m on the year-round average payment plan). The reduction was directly related to our attempts at saving energy in our home. Susan’s daughter, Deedee, suggested that we put our $40 savings aside each month for a travel fund. If you put things in perspective and consider Deedee’s suggestion, saving energy in our home could pay for a beach trip.

Frugality definitely has its benefits.

My daughter will be 13 years old tomorrow, but I’m the one who feels like he’s been gifted a birthday present: A highly intelligent, caring, witty, beautiful, frugal daughter. :)

A few notes from this week:

Susan has been canning veggies from her father’s garden nonstop for the last three or four weeks. I offered to write for Frugal Poet today, giving her a break from wordsmithing. (I ain’t crazy. There’s a chance I could be gifted a jar or two of veggie goodness!)

I received a phone call the other day that could have been an attempt at infecting my computer. I’m very cautious when I receive phone calls from people asking me to connect to a web site. Here’s the gist of my conversation with the “computer security expert”:

Curtis [answering the phone]: Bartle Doo?
Phone Guy: Excuse me?
Curtis: I said, "Bartle Doo?"
Phone Guy: Yes, well, my name is Raj and I work for Microsoft Security...
Curtis: Microsoft Security? Isn't that an oxymoron?
Phone Guy: I'm sorry?
Curtis: Don't be sorry. It's not your fault that Microsoft makes the most insecure operating systems on the face of the planet.
Phone Guy: Well, I'm calling to...
Curtis: ...In fact, I'm installing Linux on an old laptop as we speak...
Phone Guy: Linux?
Curtis: Yes, it's a free operating system and it's more secure than Windows. You should try it! [Phone Guy starts laughing...]. Seriously, go home, download Linux -- there are many varieties -- and install it over Windows! You'll be a helluva lot less prone to computer viruses.
Phone Guy [laughing]: Yes, well...thank you...[and he hangs-up the phone]

Bottom line, be wary of phone calls that could be attempts at phishing your private information or infecting your computer.

I had surgery a year ago today. I penned this poem a few days after my surgery:

untethered

i am told
my thyroid was shaped
like a butterfly,
a butterfly whose wings
had grown disfigured
with lesions

a surgeon’s
skilled hand
untethered my butterfly
leaving
a smiley face scar
on my throat

--Curtis Dunlap (July 27, 2010)

Susan gifted me with enough jalapeno peppers for 4 ½ pints. I canned what you see in the picture. Here’s the recipe I used.

3 parts white vinegar to 1 part apple cider vinegar
¼ teaspoon sugar (per jar)
1 teaspoon canning salt (per jar)
1 clove garlic (per jar)

If you don’t know how to prepare your jars and lids, leave me a note in the comments section below. It’s easier than that cobbler recipe I attempted last week. :)

Cobbler, Karma and Unpleasant Odors

I’m not a sweet freak. Oh, I like a good slice of cake or pie from time-to-time and I’d likely walk a mile in 100 degree heat for a bowl of homemade ice cream, but sweets are not the first thing I peruse when looking at a menu. And good heavens!--I do not want sugar in my biscuits, chili, soups or stews. I’m of the mind that sugar is best utilized in sweet tea and desserts.

A few months ago I stopped at a local diner and ordered a good old country, soulful meal of pinto beans, collard greens and cornbread. I took a bite of cornbread and immediately tasted (egads!) sugar! The cook stepped out of the kitchen to talk to a waitress. Unable to control my disappointment, I asked, “How much sugar do you use in your cornbread?” The cook replied, “Not much.” But the fact is, any sugar in cornbread is too much for me. If I want something sweet that’s comparable to a slice of cornbread, I’ll eat a moonpie or an oatmeal cookie and wash it down with an RC Cola!

Now, before I receive a flood of emails or comments chastising me for my distaste of sugar in the aforementioned foods, please understand that these are my taste preferences. To each his/her own. Different strokes for different...oh well, you get my meaning. I’m not going to look at you like you’ve grown a third eye in the middle of your forehead if you like sugar in your cornbread. Nope. Not me. That’s just not my style.

There is, however, another variety of food that I enjoy to the point of braving the summer heat for its natural sweet goodness: Berries! Yes, all varieties of fresh berries. I’m like a honey badger going after larvae in a beehive when it comes to berries! And so, last week, when my good friend, David Collins, sent an email to me asking if I’d like to pick blackberries at his home, I borrowed a bucket from Susan and drove to see my friend in record time. In fact, I was in such a hurry that I didn’t dress appropriately for berry picking. Trust me folks, shorts, sandals and a short sleeve t-shirt are not blackberry picking attire...but that’s okay. I learned more that day than the fact that blue jeans and boots will repel thorns and chiggers better than shorts and sandals. I learned that it’s okay to eat two blackberries to three picked when in the company of a good friend. Sure, it makes for slow blackberry picking, but I enjoyed talking to David. The heat, thorns, chiggers, the threat of stepping on a snake are things I didn't think about.

What I did think about were those succulent blackberries and the fact that I’m fortunate to have a friend who’s willing to share.

Okay, I’ll likely take a little heat for this, but I’m going to fess up and admit that I botched a cobbler recipe recently. I was going to share the recipe here today, but doing so would be detrimental to my reputation as a cook. I consider this cobbler snafu bad karma for my brashness at publicly denouncing my cooking sensei’s use of self-rising flour in her squash fritter recipe. Why? Because, dabburnit, I was supposed to use self-rising flour in the cobbler recipe! What goes around comes around or some such... Payback’s a...well, you know...

Are there any followers of this blog willing to share a tried and true cobbler recipe? If so, please post your recipe in the comments section below or send an email.

I have no recipe today, but I will leave you with a frugal tip: Recently my truck was inundated with a very unpleasant odor, one that offends the olfactory to the point that driving down a country road at 60 miles an hour with the windows down is about the only thing you can do to alleviate the stench (the skunk population in Rockingham County is alive and thriving--minus one).

If this happens to you, or rather, your vehicle, place a dryer sheet (Downy will do but I buy generic) under either the driver or passenger seat. Roll the windows up and park your vehicle in direct sunlight for at least eight hours. The scented sheet will help eradicate the bad odor.

I’ll close with one of my Southern Legitimacy Statements. For some odd reason, I was reminded of this particular SLS during my blackberry picking adventure.

Southern Legitimacy Statement #6

My daddy used to say that if you ever felt lonely, run naked through a patch of weeds. “There ain’t nothing like a family of chiggers to remind you that you’re not alone,” he’d say, with a chuckle. I don’t know whether or not he was speaking from personal experience, but I can tell you one thing: A mason jar of moonshine will make you do foolish things.

The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature - April 2011 edition

Confluence and Contemplation

In this week of summer’s solstice, Papa’s garden is rolling along precisely according to his plan - like an avalanche.   I spend an inordinate amount of time in the kitchen in the summertime preparing meals with the freshest ingredients we’ll enjoy all year and preserving our garden’s bounty for the coming winter.  At this point I am having an unhealthy degree of difficulty conjuring something innovative to do with produce despite having loads of recipes and years of thinking outside the box to nudge my elusive kitchen muse into action.  Maybe she evaporated right along with the heavy steam coming off of that last cauldron of boiling vinegar on my stovetop.  It’s possible she abandoned me somewhere after the mountains of spinach gave way to endless heaps of broccoli which then, Lord help me, gave way to a seemingly constant stream of zucchini and yellow squash.  She might have fallen into either of the two 6-gallon earthenware crocks of pickles sitting in their brine baths in a corner of my kitchen.  And now the banana peppers have decided to ripen all at once?

Yes, being able to enjoy such an overabundance of good food first requires one heck of a lot of work and some imagination, but I actually enjoy it.  My mind finds ample opportunities to wander when I’ve committed to slicing several gallons of cucumbers, making the same repetitive motions for a few hours straight.  And though my mind can traipse some entirely pointless paths at times, I sometimes find a few things on such mental walk-abouts.  For instance, while sorting and washing a colossal cache of banana peppers I mulled over two words - confluence and contemplation.  I first thought of the two terms as existing independently of each other entirely but pretty quickly decided that they provide balance when considered cohesively.  Confluence describes a coming together of two or more things and, at least for me, prompts a mental image of tension before an eventual peaceful and productive coexistence (two rivers colliding to become one).  I regard contemplation as requiring focus but also as providing a certain serenity for going to the trouble (sitting just a bit downriver of the confluence).  And it was precisely at this epiphanous moment that my muse reappeared, thumping my skull with her knuckle and chiding  “Are you still trying to figure out what to do with all those peppers? Make mustard.  You’ve already pickled everything that ain’t nailed down in this kitchen.” 

And just like that, she was back!  My muse and I butt heads often; our union is frequently a tug of war.  But I’ve learned that she plays by her own rules...and usually wins.

Muse Mustard

40 banana peppers, stems removed 4 cups prepared yellow mustard 3 cups white sugar 1 cup honey *5 jalapeno peppers, seeded 1 cup water

4 cups apple cider vinegar 3 tablespoons salt 2 cups brown sugar 1 bulb garlic, cloves peeled and minced *5 jalapeno peppers, unseeded 1 cup all-purpose flour

*Note:  Add more jalapeno peppers if you like your mustard like Curtis likes his women - hot and spicy!

Remove the seeds from the banana peppers and place them into a blender or food processor.  Add seeded and unseeded jalapeno peppers and minced garlic.  Process until smooth.  Pour into a large heavy pot and stir in the mustard, sugars, vinegar, honey and salt.  Bring to a hard boil which cannot be stirred down.

Whisk together the flour and water until smooth in a medium-sized bowl.  Whisk in one cup of the boiling mustard mixture, whisking until completely smooth and add it back to the pot of boiling mustard.  Continue to boil, stirring constantly for 5 minutes.  Pour into sterile pint jars and seal with new lids and rings.  Process in a boiling water bath for 5-10 minutes. 

And finally, a poem gifted to me by my muse while watching my daughters in kayaks last weekend. 

oars in tandem

water lapping

at their differences

A Mentor Stops By

Last month I sat in Susan’s living room talking poetry with her and her daughter Deedee. I commented that Paul MacNeil, one of the editors of The Heron’s Nest, a haiku journal, would soon migrate north from his home in Florida to his cabin along the shores of Onawa Lake in Maine. Paul spends summers there enjoying his beloved cabin by the lake, writing poetry, entertaining family and friends before migrating back to Florida when autumn’s chill sets in.

I’ve known Paul for over a decade (thru email correspondences) and I’ve had the good fortune to meet and talk with him a couple of times, once at a Haiku Holiday and then at a Haiku North America conference. Paul is an excellent conversationalist with a great sense of humor. He has also become a great friend and mentor, instructing me in the fine art of haikai no michi (The Way of Haiku).

When I commented that it would be nice to see Paul again, Susan spoke-up and said, “Why not invite him to stop by on his way to Maine?” I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of inviting Paul to Mayodan sooner. Entertaining family and friends is something that I’ve wanted to do since I became a resident of Poet’s Cottage. What a great idea! I thought. I hurried home and sent the following email:

Paul,

Susan and I are wondering if you'll come thru NC anytime soon?

Bottom line, want to sip moonshine and stay a day or two?

Can you find Mayodan? ;-)

To which Paul replied a few minutes later: 

Dear Scottish Bro,

I KID YOU NOT!!
Getting your latest recipe, I was putting the final edit on one.  This very evening!
Great minds?

I am heading north in June and will consider when I get a narrower time frame.  Big thanks for the invite to visit you and Susan.

- Paul

PS
recipe to follow

With a little cellphone assistance in navigating Mayodan’s three stoplights Paul arrived at Poet’s Cottage on June 9th. Upon his arrival, The Heron’s Nest editor gifted Susan and me two bottles of wine and copies of The Onawa Poems 1999-2008, an anthology of haiku and renku with poems by Paul and the numerous visitors to his home in Maine.

Here are a few poems from the anthology:

summer haze
a long wake curls ashore
lifting a frog

    --Paul MacNeil

short night
loon calls echo
our laughter

    --Yu Chang

long days
the wild roses
glow at dusk

    --Hilary Tann

we tolerate the heat
with the help of
a single malt

    --John Stevenson

Susan and I wanted to entertain our friend The Frugal Poet way. I made southern style biscuits and gravy for Paul on Sunday morning and Susan, well, my phenomenal cooking sensei prepared one of the best meals I think I’ve had the pleasure of eating: broccoli casserole, creamy rosemary onions, pork loin (drizzled in a homemade honey mustard sauce) and for dessert, homemade vanilla ice cream.

Suffice is to say that we all had a great time. Paul continued his trek to Maine on Monday morning, inviting Susan and me to visit his cabin by Onawa Lake. I fully intend to visit Paul at his cabin in the not too distant future.

Here's a quick and easy recipe for cucumbers.

Cucumber Salad

2 1/4 cups vinegar
6 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons salt
dash of pepper (to your liking)
cucumbers
onions

Slice cucumbers and onions. Add veggies to the vinegar, sugar, salt and pepper marinade. Refrigerate overnight.

I’ll close with a poem from The Onawa Poems that best describes the time we had with Paul.

warm kitchen
the rise and fall
of friends’ laughter

        --Yu Chang

Curtis Dunlap, Susan Nelson Myers with Heron's Nest editor, Paul MacNeil

Photo by Alana Dunlap

Birddog Mouths and Hummingbird Rears

We’ve a relatively new addition to our household, a black labrador who had lived on the lam in a neighboring town until the police picked her up. After a brief stint at the police station, she was relocated to the local veterinarian’s office where my husband and I met her and offered her a home. Black Dog loves her morning walks with Hubs. She wakes him early with a cold nose to his face and dances around until he leashes her to greet whatever awaits them outside. After an especially long walk this fine morning, Black Dog re-entered the house and was simply beside herself with pleasure. She immediately pounced on a squeaky toy, chomped on it giving it a full chirpy voice and then flopped over onto her back to wallow on the rug. She’s an especially vocal girl so she grumbled and growled her delight. Her floundering about turned into gleeful tail chasing. Her frenzy so completely absorbed her that she bit her own tail! Bear with me because there’s a moral to this story.  

In last week’s Frugal Poet post fellow poet, Curtis Dunlap, thought he’d caught me making an egregious error in the kitchen by using self-rising instead of plain cornmeal to make squashpuppies. Curtis was just beside himself with pleasure over his discovery that I’d taken a shortcut. He immediately pounced on the idea to call me out on my sleight-of-hand, chomping on the notion until giving it a full chirpy voice. He’s an especially eloquent man so he politely and delightfully rhapsodized his revelation in his blog post. His glee was so complete that he entirely missed my point! Shortcuts aren’t the problem - it’s what sneaks in through the back door when using them.

The only difference between the one cup of self-rising cornmeal I used when making squashpuppies and one cup of all purpose corn meal is the inclusion of 1 ½ teaspoons of baking powder and ½ teaspoon of salt in the former. There was a huge difference in his using a canned biscuit shortcut in his Crockpot Chicken and Dumpling Recipe from my insistence that biscuits from scratch are better. For those wishing to indulge themselves in a pure buttermilk biscuit, you can find the recipe with a full ingredient listing here. In the spirit of further educating our readers, I went to the grocery and bought a sleeve of canned biscuits to save you the trouble of sorting out the differences and to better illustrate precisely what sneaks in a back door when taking his suggested shortcut. The ingredients in a sleeve of one major brand of canned biscuits is as follows: enriched bleached flour (wheat flour, niacin, ferrous sulfate, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, soybean and palm oil, sugar, hydrogenated palm oil, baking powder, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, salt, wheat gluten, dextrose, whey, mono and diglycerides, xanthan gum, propylene glycol alginate, TBHQ (preservative), natural and artificial flavor and, finally, added color. All sorts of things traipsed with an engraved invitation into Curtis’ kitchen by using canned biscuits! So I suppose the moral to this story is twofold. Firstly, beware who you invite to dinner. Secondly, don’t let your birddog mouth catch up with your hummingbird rear.

Squashpuppies

¾ cup self-rising cornmeal
¼ cup all purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
⅛ teaspoon ground red pepper
6 medium-sized yellow squash, finely diced
1 small onion, minced
½ cup buttermilk
1 large egg
vegetable oil

Combine first 5 ingredients into a bowl. Add minced squash and onion and toss. Lightly beat the egg into the buttermilk, add to vegetable/cornmeal mixture and blend well. Pour oil to a depth of ½ inch in heavy skillet and heat to 350 degrees F. Drop batter by tablespoonfuls into hot oil and fry a few minutes on each side, until golden. Drain on paper-lined plate and lightly salt while still hot. Since you’re working in batches, the batter may eventually thin to an undesirable consistency; if so, add just enough additional cornmeal to tighten its consistency. Zucchini works just as well in this recipe as yellow squash.

A good recipe and a poem for your health. Salud!

a slight turn
reveals something new -
mango moon