So here's our beloved Hazel in her Hallowe'en costume. I had never heard of The Mandalorian until she told us about it. You may read more here, if you are interested. She is wild about the show. Already the talk is about boys' and girls' clothing. Someone told her The Mandalorian was for boys. She doesn't care. She loves it! Today is the Trunk or Treat where parents park their cars and decorate them for Hallowe'en, and the little kids go from car to car for treats.
Margaret didn't really plan on having a Hallowe'en party this year, but people asked and she did! Last year's party is here.
It was another warm evening. We haven't even had a frost yet! Unheard of around here. But it has meant that the lovely autumn has gone on for a longer time.
The kids and parents were down the hill until it got dark and then they made their way along the trail to our house. There were even more creepy delights than last year.
This one probably wins the creepiness award! Tom moved the tractor down into the field so the spider would have a home. There were battery candles that lit up at night.
And here is a closeup.
The "graves" were made of styrofoam.
The two last pictures were taken as I walked down the hill, not up to our house. Margaret's driveway is to the left by the orange maple tree.
When the kids arrived at our house this is what they found.
One For Sorrow (Two For Joy) is an old English nursery rhyme.
One for sorrow,
This is a recipe from a woman whose blog I used to read and enjoy. And then she just stopped. Happily, it is still on the internet.
I went to my blog to find the exact recipe, and I don't have it under "recipes". I did find it here and decided I'd post it so I could have it in my recipe list.
This is Tara's blog. The last entry was in 2010. A lot of the people whose blogs I follow commented, and if any one of you knows anything about her since that time, - like a new blog somewhere? - I'd love to know.
So, back to the recipe.
Chop up shallots, as many as you need. It will depend on how many mashed potatoes you are making.
Sauté in butter and olive oil (you choose portions of each) until well-done, even crispy.
Cook potatoes until soft, and mash with butter and salt.
Add shallots and mix in well.
Serve. Yum!
I also made guacamole from a recipe a friend gave me recently.
Put 2 avocados through food processor. This didn't make them completely smooth, but were just right.
Chop shallots very finely and add to avocados. Squeeze half a lemon and strain juice into mixture.
That's it! And it was very good. I'm not an eater of raw onions, but this was alright. Shallots aren't as sharp a taste as onions can be. But the next time, I might try sautéing them a bit. I have no idea how it would turn out, but worth a try.
I used to post to Weekend Cooking, but I haven't been allowed to in ages.
Addendum: It worked this time!
Today at 3:21 pm Eastern time the sun goes into Libra, beginning the autumn season.
I came across this quote today and thought it perfect for the blowsy, over-stayed-its-welcome cleome! It looks so out of place amongst all the autumnal colors around these days. Unbelievably, we haven't had a frost yet!
I have lately been watching a program which is on Britbox - Bergerac. I'm sure all my English friends will know the series. The other evening as Jim pulled up to the gas pumps to have his car filled with gasoline, I got to thinking about what I enjoy about the older shows.
You may know that I have been buying flowers from a local flower farmer for several years. Under "letter topics" there is a Flower CSA, and my first post was June 29, 2016. The idea of a CSA, Community Supported Agriculture, is to provide money upfront for the farmer to use.
As may be obvious, I haven't posted as much this year, and the CSA postings have been non-existent. I am going to try and remedy that situation now, in one long posting of the glorious flowers I have enjoyed.
This batch is from another farm that started in the past few years. She grows flowers, and she bakes. Her wares are available at the local farmers' market. This is her first year of offering a CSA, and I was delighted with the spring blooms. Not only are the flowers wonderful, but I love the brown paper "tied up with strings" (The Sound of Music).
April 28
May 5
May 12
May 19
And this year's weekly flowers from the original woman. We have rather a lot of women farmers in a few local towns. Most of them are relatively new, and they have been such a wonderful addition to our communities.
August 4
August 11 and 18
I couldn't load because my camera was set on "live" - won't do that again!
August 25
September 1
September 8
And there we are. Weeks and weeks of such beauty!
"But now in September the garden has cooled, and with it my possessiveness. The sun warms my back instead of beating on my head ... The harvest has dwindled, and I have grown apart from the intense midsummer relationship that brought it on."
- Robert FinchThe past few months have been a strain at Windy Poplars Farm.
Tom's 93-year-old mother has had increasing signs of dementia, and is currently in a hospital where they are evaluating what is going on. From there we are expecting a move to a mental care facility and we hope it will be a place that is five minutes away from us. There have been a few times when his mother has expressed interest in moving up here - to independent living, and later to assisted living - but every time it didn't work out.
Our son Michael and his wife, Estée have separated. It has mostly been harmonious, but it is still one of those big changes that are very stressful and worrisome. They are now both settled into rental houses in the same town. They are, without any court intervention, sharing custody of Campbell and Indy. The kids seem to be doing alright, even well. Maybe at six and seven they are able to grasp that their parents are happier apart; better friends and parents not living together. As you may guess we, and Margaret have been very involved in this whole process. The kids have been up here a lot, which is good for all of us. I have a blog post planned with summer fun pictures.
With two big emotional situations in our lives, there haven't been many minutes to read during the day, and in the evening I just want to settle into one of the wonderful television shows available or an old, much-loved DVD. So almost all my reading has been bedtime, or early morning reading in bed, which means the Kindle.
A few months ago, Acorn TV offered a new detective series called Whitstable Pearl. I enjoyed it, and naturally bought the first book in the series. As is so often true, the books are very different and offer a much more in-depth story and character development than television. This is not to say that the book is always better. I could barely read the Inspector Morse books, but I adore the television production and actually think it is much better!
I expect I am not alone in being a foreigner who did not know that Whitstable is a real town. Look to the right - on the coast, and almost even with London on the map.
You can see loads of photographs here. It really sounds beautiful, though Julie Wassmer, the author of the books makes it clear that there are the usual problems with vacation destinations. The DFL, Down From Londoners, buy up property and use it occasionally, while the rest of the time they rent it out. These rents are mostly too high for the locals, and young people can't afford to live in the town they grew up in. Whitstable seems to have been able to avoid one of the downfalls of popularity and that is that their stores are less national names than local, independently owned. The author does an excellent job of portraying the landscape, the businesses, the public lands.
I had the supreme reader's joy of reading the eight available books in the series, one right after the other. I so love finding a new-to-me author and doing this. The main character is Pearl who owns a restaurant called Whitstable Pearl which offers local seafood. She is a single mother whose son is now going to college in nearby Canterbury. This city is also described beautifully. Pearl's mother is a widow, quite alternative in her thinking (a bit like this reader), and very flamboyant in her choice of clothes and haircolors (not a bit like me there!). There are other characters who appear in many of the books, and then new ones who are introduced in each new murder case.
When Pearl was young she began going to school to become a police officer. She became pregnant with the love of her life (who by then had moved away), and had to leave. She isn't the kind to look back with regret. She has made a wonderful life for herself and her son. After her son leaves for college, she starts her own detective agency. She has a real gift for the work. She is one of those rare characters - a woman who is contented, self-assured, and quite genuinely happy.
I love this series and look forward to next year's offering.
Yesterday afternoon we were standing around the kitchen - Tom, Margaret, Hazel, Campbell, Indy, and I - when a police car drove up. This has happened a few times in our 40 years in this house. My heart always goes into my throat fearing for my kids. This time I wasn't concerned because Michael is in another town, and Margaret was right here! But I still needed to go out and see what was going on. The man asked, "Do you have a Pug?" I told him no, but my daughter does, and then I asked if she were dead. He said, "No, he's (he didn't know the gender) in the car!" Margaret was out the door by then, and we walked over and got the whole story.
Seems a couple of out-of-staters were driving past our road and saw Piglet walking kind of in circles at the bottom of our dirt road which spills onto a busy, tarred state road. They stopped and picked her up and brought her to the police station. The police then drove over here. We were all so very grateful, and amazed. We talked for a long time about the wonder of this. How kind the people were to take the time to bring her to the police, and for the police to bring her back home. There were two of them, a man and a woman with the biggest smiles, probably in their twenties. Just the kindest, dearest police you've ever seen. I wish they could make the national news!
Margaret checked the town page on Facebook and the police had posted a picture of Piggie - (and here comes a bad pun) a "Pug shot", telling the story of where she was found and to get in touch with the police.
This is not the first time Miss Piggie has gotten into trouble. Another day a fellow drove into Margaret's yard, having picked up her up also at the bottom of our road. Again, such kindness.
And this is her a couple years ago. You'll notice the chair does not say her name.
He may have backed the world’s most successful rock band, but the late drummer worshipped his jazz heroes through big bands and other projects
Everyone knew that Charlie Watts’s heart was always in jazz. Even when he grew his hair long and put on hippie garb while the Rolling Stones were going through their Satanic Majesties period, underneath he was still the cool bebopper who could see through the nonsense that surrounded his group and the rampaging egos at its heart.
Wisely, he never let his true musical allegiance show in his playing with the Stones. When they recruited him from Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated in January 1963, not long after he’d been serving an apprenticeship with trad jazz bands, he listened to the records of Jimmy Reed, Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters in order to absorb the way that master Chicago blues drummers such as Earl Phillips, Fred Below and Elgin Evans kept things simple, soon appreciating that simplicity is often the hardest thing of all to achieve.
His personal adaptation of their discreet approach, concentrating on a firm backbeat and avoiding any form of decoration, turned out to be perfect for the Stones as the volume rose and the venues grew in size, but it could hardly have been further from the styles of the great modern jazz drummers he had grown up worshipping. The likes of Max Roach, Art Blakey, Philly Joe Jones and Elvin Jones had freed the drum kit from its subordinate role, enabling them to become full participants in the music, adding a running commentary to the improvisations of horn players such as Miles Davis and John Coltrane, sometimes even as an equal partner.
Growing up in a postwar prefab in Wembley, Watts had saved money to buy 78s by Jelly Roll Morton and Johnny Dodds, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. When he was given his own first full kit, after getting a start by dismantling a banjo to use the body and the vellum as a makeshift drum, he painted the name “Chico” on the front head of what was known in those days as the bass drum. This was a homage to Chico Hamilton, a Los Angeles drummer who had played in a famous quartet with Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker in the early 1950s before launching his own adventurous quintet, which enjoyed a vogue at the end of that decade and appeared on screen in the 1957 movie Sweet Smell of Success.
Never ashamed of his tendency towards hero-worship, Watts showed his colours in his first act of independent creativity. Ode to a Highflying Bird, published in 1964, when the Stones were hitting No 1 in the UK charts with It’s All Over Now and Little Red Rooster, was a slender volume of words and cartoons in which he used his skills as a trained graphic artist to illustrate the story of Parker (whom he later covered with his quintet), charmingly rendered as a kind of children’s fable.
His soulmate in the earliest incarnation of the Stones had been Ian Stewart, a piano player who loved boogie-woogie and other forms of jazz but who was soon eased out of the performing lineup on account of his looks and persuaded to take over the job of road manager instead. In the late 70s Watts moonlighted with Stewart in Rocket 88, a boogie and jump-blues band whose shifting lineup included guests such as Chris Farlowe, Zoot Money and Jack Bruce.
Always finding jazz clubs more congenial than the stadiums the Stones were now playing, in 1985 he filled the stage at Ronnie Scott’s with a 32-piece big band drawn from the cream of London’s jazz musicians. An extraordinarily eclectic lineup ranged from bop-era veterans to Courtney Pine, an unknown 21-year-old at the start of his career, who sat alongside his fellow tenor saxophonists Danny Moss, Bobby Wellins, Don Weller and Alan Skidmore. Jack Bruce played cello – his first instrument – and Stan Tracey was on piano. Watts sat happily at his kit between two other drummers, the older Bill Eyden and the younger John Stevens, as they played arrangements of classics such as Lester Leaps In, Stompin’ at the Savoy and Prelude to a Kiss. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were in the house to cheer what Watts called the fulfilment of a childhood dream.
He was able to subsidise the project, which toured the US the following year, from his earnings as a Stone. In later years he took advantage of the band’s substantial downtime to return to Ronnie Scott’s and other venues with groups of more modest size and to record in 1996 a beautiful album of standards, Long Ago and Far Away, played by his quintet, a small orchestra and the singer Bernard Fowler. These warm, relaxed versions of songs such as Stairway to the Stars and In a Sentimental Mood, with Watts’s presence registered only by the gentle background rustle of wire brushes, were about as far from Sympathy for the Devil and Street Fighting Man as it is possible for music to get, but they were clearly heartfelt.
He was never patronising about the music he played with his fellow Stones but his long and loyal friendships with other jazz musicians, such as the saxophonist Peter King and the bassist Dave Green, whom he had known since childhood, were of great importance to him. Another close friend was the American drummer Jim Keltner, with whom he recorded a percussion-based album in 2000, again between Stones tours. Each of the record’s nine tracks took its title from the names of the drummers he idolised: Roach, Blakey, Kenny Clarke, Roy Haynes and so on. Yet again he was paying unforced and deeply felt tribute to the musicians who had enriched his life, as he, in a different register, enriched the lives of others.
I'm always pleased when I see our neighbor's name on my caller ID because it means blueberry season has begun! This year the first call was July 29. The last of the berries was on August 12. This year we bought 26 quarts.
This is more than last year's 17, and equal to 2018's number. The man asked about the numbers because his wife likes to keep track, so I gave him the list I posted here on last year's blueberry report.
What you may see to the left (and under) the berries is my bread flour. A fourth-generation farmer just across the state line has begun growing wheat and other grains. The farm he grew up on was a dairy farm. Dairy, as you may know, has declined greatly in the country so they sold up, and he now has a grain farm. You may read an article about it here. I buy 50 pounds of whole wheat flour,
move it to freezer bags, and freeze it. I take out a couple bags at a time so I always have some available. I make bread twice a week. The fridge freezer has local strawberries, and some blueberries from another local source. Today I am heading to the Co-op to get lots of local sweet peppers to freeze. Ah, August!
We have three favorite meals that I make only in summertime. I made a little vow to myself years ago that I would eat tomatoes only when they are fresh and local or from my own plants. They are heavenly. The other times of the year they come from God-knows-where and are, as they say, like cardboard plus being expensive. So when summer comes we eat and eat them. I also never buy fresh basil any other time of year, and usually have enough that I have grown myself.
Hummus (which I do make other times of the year, sans tomatoes)
Sometimes on TV you will hear the phrase "wow factor". Well, I think the cleome and cosmos both have it. This year we started two-year-old seeds of both these plants. We figured we had nothing to lose, and maybe they would be fine. And they were. More than fine! This is the variety of cleome I bought from Renee's Garden. Some people say "cle-ome-ee" but I prefer cleome, sounding like gnome.
