Christmas Cookies, an essay

December 31, 2023 //
2

No one makes Christmas cookies like we do.

My mother baked a lot of cookies when I was growing up: Toll House chocolate chip cookies with walnuts, oatmeal cookies with raisins or coconut, peanut butter cookies marked by the criss-cross tines of a fork, snickerdoodles, butterscotch refrigerator cookies, brownies. She had a cookie press and I remember a few experiments with spritz.

When November came each year she chopped pounds of dried and candied fruit and nuts for homemade fruitcake, soaking the baked loaves in brandy. And in December she began holiday cookie production. Her specialty was thin, crisp cookies, rolled, cut and decorated with colored sugar. She made Moravian ginger cookies. She made butter cookies flavored with lemon and vanilla. She rolled her cookies out on flour-sack dishtowels on a wooden cutting board with a wooden rolling pin. The recipes made at least six dozen each.

I don’t know how she did it. I began apprenticing with her as a Christmas cookie baker when I was perhaps twelve years old. The floured cloth would wrinkle. The dough would stick to the rolling pin and tear. Some of the cookie cutters would not pick up the cut cookies and if I forgot to flour a cutter between each use the dough would crumple. The thin cookies had to be watched in the oven, pulled at the first sign of browning. Moravians burned really fast.

My first efforts were lackluster. I would use too much flour to try to control the sticky dough. The room would be too warm. I would not roll the dough thinly enough — usually Mom would take another pass or two with the rolling pin, or even take over, stretching the dough further than I could.

When I was in my thirties, I bought Mom a marble slab and a marble rolling pin to make cookie-making easier. I had read somewhere that working on chilled marble helped keep cookie dough at the correct temperature. She didn’t use the marble much, not liking to pick up the heavy slab. I used it at her house, clearing a shelf in the refrigerator to hold it, putting the metal bowls of cookie dough on top of it. I found it easier to roll cookie dough on marble than on cloth and when a construction crew was demolishing the old Cogswell College building in San Francisco I carted home a piece of marble from the walls. My boyfriend at the time cut it into a baking slab for me.

By the time Mom was eighty, she had ceded thin, crisp Christmas cookies to me. She still made dream bars and Russian teacakes, Rice Krispie candy, poppy seed bread baked in old coffee cans, and fudge. I spent long hours in the breakfast room rolling, cutting, decorating with colored sugar, ferrying finished trays to the oven and then to cooling racks.

One Christmas a friend gave me a silicone baking mat, a tool which made it possible for me to master Mom’s thin, crisp pie crust (Mine had always been too thick). A floured silicone mat will not stick, allowing you to roll thin sheets of pie dough, cookie dough, noodles. I acquired a bench scraper, which I had seen on some cooking show, and a microplane zester. My baking life got easier, although Christmas cookies still required long hours of work.

Somewhere along the line, I invented a third rolled and cut cookie: cocoa shortbread. I had the thought to swap one half cup of cocoa powder for one half cup of flour in a classic shortbread cookie. Those joined the roll and cut Christmas cookie line-up, but did not have to be rolled as thinly as butter cookies and Moravians. Then I read about Deb Perelman’s butter cookies made with maple syrup and nutmeg. I made them one year instead of our traditional butter cookies. My brother and I preferred them, so I swapped the maple recipe for the older one and never looked back.

I added one more cookie to our permanent Christmas cookie repertoire. One day twenty-some years ago, my mother was reminiscing about pfefferneuesse, a cookie they bought from the store during her childhood. Pfefferneusse are traditionally made with ginger, cloves, mace, cinnamon and allspice and candied orange peel. I remembered those tubs of commercial candied mixed peels from the days of fruitcake and shuddered. But both of us like candied ginger, so I decided to substitute that for the candied peel. Later, I started candying my own orange peel and made the cookies with a combination of the two ingredients.

The first time we made pfefferneusse they lacked something. Mom thumbed through some old cookbooks and discovered that the cookies used to contain ground white pepper. I threw some white peppercorns in the coffee grinder and added the fragrant powder to my next batch of dough. That was it — the “pfeffer” in “pfefferneusse.”

Most of our cookies are plain, not frosted, topped only with a sprinkle of colored sugar, but pfefferneusse require a coat of royal icing flavored with anise. I still struggle with getting the icing to set properly and watch for a dry day to make it.


* * *

Fast forward to 2023. My mother is ninety-three and has severe dementia and terminal cancer. I became her primary caretaker some months ago and do not have the time to bake Christmas cookies. I bought some chocolate stars she wanted from Trader Joe’s. We’ve eaten a few, but we don’t really like them: we miss our traditional cookies.

I put out a plea on Facebook, describing our Christmas cookie traditions. A friend offered to send us some cookies, to order them from a local bakery. I began to look at bakery menus. No one made the right things: there was too much chocolate, too many year-round cookies. My friend Kate offered to bake us some cookies if I could come up with something simple. I assigned her Russian teacakes, sending her the recipe that Mom had used for years. She brought them by a few days before Christmas with a small bag of her traditional homemade Christmas cookies. The teacakes were almost right, but a bit underdone and sporting only a thin and mottled powdered sugar coating (What we would consider the first of two required coats). Someone else dropped off first a bag of gingerbread cookies and then a bag of cut out cookies and rocky road fudge. A third friend, an experienced baker, volunteered to bake a batch of cookies for us. I sent her the pfefferneusse recipe and the maple sugar cookie recipe. When no one chose the pfefferneusse, I candied a batch of orange peel, hoping to make just that one cookie before Christmas Day (That is as far as I got with that project, but several of the twelve days of Christmas remain).

Alice chose the maple cookies and brought them by on the evening of Boxing Day, along with lemon biscotti, anise biscotti and stamped gingerbread that she had made. After she had gone, I opened the boxes to look. I found small maple stars, at least a quarter-inch thick, bearing marks of flour, sans decorative sugar. You could stack four of our cookies in the space of one of hers.

The flavor of the maple cookies was good, but, alas, they were not our cookies, rolled so thin as to be almost translucent. The lemon biscotti, however, were delicious. I might ask Alice for the recipe.

After sampling Alice’s cookies and Peg’s cookies and Kate’s cookies, I realized that our Christmas cookies, which I have always loved, are truly special. Other people make thick cookies, doughy cookies, under-baked cookies, when they make cookies with cookie cutters. Some of them apply white icing. I have not tasted a single cookie this season like our cookies.

In the past, only two people have come to bake Christmas cookies with me. The woman who is now my brother’s wife came to learn to bake them, spent a long afternoon with me in San Leandro cutting and decorating one year. She never came again. And an old friend came to take part in the holiday cookie marathon. She enjoyed decorating cookies with colored sugar, but soon suggested we abandon the project and walk to the mall instead. “This is a lot of work,” she said.

Indeed. A more recent friend suggested that I develop a sideline in baking cookies. “I would buy them,” she said.

“Too much work,” I responded, “I would never do production baking.”

At my current age of sixty-five, it probably takes me two days to make the four main cookie doughs and perhaps another two or three days to roll, cut, decorate and bake three kinds of cookies, plus a half-day to ice the pfefferneusse. It is a lot of work, special to the Christmas season: I only make these cookies once a year in a year when I have time to bake. I enjoy baking them and baking them tires me: once a year is enough, but I miss them in years when I don’t make them. Sometimes I pack up tins of them to send to friends or send them home with Christmas dinner guests.

I don’t know whether I’ll get even the pfefferneusse made this year. Yesterday I made homemade noodles and cloverleaf yeast rolls. I have not made any Christmas pie yet (twelve days remember) and I still have to bake my Mom an elaborate lemon-filled coconut cake for her 94th birthday. I’ll make Christmas cookies again though in some less busy year because their absence has taught me how unique and wonderful they are.

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Categories Christmas baking, seasonal recipes

House-hunting and Other Adventures, Part Five

September 18, 2023 //
3

While we were out buying melons on Sauvie Island I asked Carol if we could stop at a grocery store for train food: I bought a sourdough baguette to make a sandwich with and a couple of yogurts.

Back at Carol’s farmhouse we got out the slow cooker and I proceeded to chop the leaf lard into small pieces. I usually buy lard already rendered, but a homesteading website said to chop it up and cook it slowly for two hours.

“Shall I read all of the instructions, or shall we wing it?”

“Let’s wing it,” said the genuine Washington-born farm girl.

She thought we should use a basket to hold the lard above the melted lard, so we did. This resulted in the project taking four hours instead of two and gratuitously greasing up her steamer basket. You want the pieces of lard cooking in the rendered fat, which causes them to render faster. We didn’t know. I pulled the pieces out and chopped them more finely.

We also didn’t know I should have trimmed off the few visible bits of meat before rendering. Oh well. I hoped the lard wouldn’t taste porky.

Hours later, Carol got out a large and a small mason jar for me and I poured the rendered lard into them to cool. While it cooled, I talked politics with Spike, Carol showed me some of her recent artwork and we watched a few episodes of a home-buying show because, you know, real estate.

“Look at how beautiful it is. It’s so white,” Carol said.

I read about how you could fry the unrendered bits for cracklings.

Meanwhile I had been in correspondence with one of my Zoom writing students who lived on the Oregon Coast a couple of hours from Carol’s house. We invited her to come to class in person the next morning. We would supply coffee and snacks if she would arrive by 8:45 for a 9:00 o’clock class.

On Monday morning I got up and packed my luggage. I dressed and poured a cup of coffee: Carol sets it up before she goes to bed so that all I had to do was push a button. I ate something — leftovers? fruit salad? — before making a salami and cheese sandwich for the train with lettuce, mustard and Carol’s homemade bread and butter pickles. The sandwich, the yogurts and two jars of lard fit perfectly into my frozen lunch box.

Mary Bess arrived early and she and Carol hit it off, immediately finding an acquaintance in common. Carol poured coffee and offered fruit and cookies before it was time to pop into my Zoom frame to show the rest of the class that we were actually in the same physical location. We then separated to avoid multi-device-induced feedback. Mary Bess took the back porch. Carol went upstairs to her office and I conducted class from the dining room table while Spike rested in the bedroom.

After class Carol shooed me out to talk with Mary Bess. We sat at the table on the back deck and discussed real estate, my reasons for my eventual move, M.B.’s life in Seaside running a health clinic. Mary Bess invited me to stay in Seaside if I came through Oregon again and asked if she could take my picture

Then it was time to say goodbye. Spike carried my bags to the car. Carol drove to Portland. I checked in at the historic Portland train depot, all high ceilings, marble and wooden benches with high backs.

I spent another 22 hours on the train, eating my sandwich for dinner, my yogurts for breakfast and trying to sleep in the uncomfortable chairs. When I got back to the Bay Area we had WiFi so I spent the last leg of my train journey chatting with a writing buddy about my adventures before catching a bus from Emeryville to Kensington and resuming my regular life, which is not so regular anymore, but that is another story.

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Categories home cooking, Travel

House-hunting and Other Adventures, Part Four

September 17, 2023 //
4

The plan for Sunday morning in Port Angeles was to pack up to leave, to try the second breakfast place that I had been tracking from afar, and to visit the year-round Port Angeles farmers market, one of the reasons I chose Port Angeles as a potential place to live. While packing I kept dealing with annoying texts from a Port Townsend realtor: I had been trying to book an appointment to see a Victorian cottage there. Carol and I would be able to stop in Port Townsend on our way to her home in St Helens, Oregon, if we could get an appointment in the early afternoon.

The texts asked me to declare things like was I planning to buy a house. Yes. Then they wanted to know if I planned to buy it immediately, in two months, six months, or more than a year. My honest answer, “more than a year” was the kiss of death: the next flurry of texts concerned when an agent could speak with me. I kept texting “Pls no texts” because texting is difficult for me (flip phone meets dexterity deficits due to cerebral palsy).

Carol and I did make it to breakfast. After my elaborate French toast the previous day and our gourmet dinner at the lake, I decided to go with basics: scrambled eggs, breakfast potatoes and toast. I took particular care to ask about the breakfast potatoes because I do not care for hash browns.

The restaurant was a long narrow room with tables against the wall and a long counter. One server seemed to be doing most of the work: taking orders, carrying food to customers, serving people at the bar. She took our order, returned in a few minutes with our plates and was at the other end of the restaurant before I could tell her I had been given the wrong plate: there, next to the eggs, sat a slab of hash browns. Also, neither Carol nor I had received water, although we had asked for it.

While Carol tucked into her salmon I tried to signal our server. When she approached I said, “I think I was given someone else’s order.”

She consulted her pad. “Oh, they just gave you hash browns instead of breakfast potatoes.”

She swept the plate away and brought it back moments later sans hash browns. On another pass through the room she set down a second plate containing breakfast potatoes and several packets of jam. I lucked out here: my first plate had had Smuckers strawberry, which I do not like, but the new installment included blackberry.

It’s hard to mess up scrambled eggs and toast, but the potatoes were nothing to write home about.

We returned to Carol’s car and scored a parking spot across the street from the farmers market. While we waited for it to open, I received another text, asking if the real estate agent could call me at a later time.

“Yes,” I texted, getting tired of this.

We crossed the street and entered the farmers market. Carol had been talking about wishing she could buy a share of a butchered pig and, next to a bakery stall, we walked past a stall advertising beef shares and pork shares. Continuing on, we stopped at a produce stand with glowing golden beets: Carol bought some to take home.

We browsed a mushroom stall. Across the way I saw a beautiful wool hat on a stand. “That would look good on you,” Carol said.

“Try it on if you want” said the owner of the booth, who was spinning as she spoke.

“Your work is beautiful,” I said, pausing to look at bundles of roving. “Is this purple or indigo?”

“I would say it is a dark blue.”

That was the wrong answer: had it been purple I would have bought it for a friend.

“Have we seen everything?” I asked Carol.

“I think so,” she said.

On our way out she stopped by the pork shares guy and bought something. I had a sudden inspiration: “Do you have leaf lard?”

The vendor dug through a cooler and brought out a one pound package. Leaf lard is the fat around a pig’s kidneys: it is the best kind of lard for baking. I use lard as part of the shortening in pie crust — it adds flakiness.

“Do you know how to render it?” he asked. “Put it in a slow cooker for a couple of hours.”

“I have a slow cooker,” Carol said.

“Do you mind doing a kitchen project?”

I knew Carol wouldn’t mind: she puts up her own pickles and jams.

In the mean time, the real estate agent hadn’t called back, so we decided to drive to Port Townsend ourselves, figuring we could get a look at the outside of the house and be around if an agent could show it to us.

As we were approaching Port Townsend a real estate agent called to say he could show us the house at 3:00 PM.

“Can we see it at 3:00?” I asked Carol.

“No, that’s too late,” she said.

“That’s too late,” I said. “I’m only here one day from California and we have to get back to St. Helens tonight.”

“I don’t have anyone who can show you the house.”

Fine. Carol and I drove around Port Townsend until we found the small house on a corner lot. The backyard was full of deer scat and the exterior had not been painted in some time. There was a lock box on the red-painted front door and plenty of cars on the street but no sign of real estate agents or house tours.

“I’m going to look around,” I said.

I walked all around the house, peering in windows. I could get a good view of the living room that way. I hesitated before walking up onto the back porch to peer in the kitchen window. I couldn’t see the layout of the kitchen.

I wanted to jimmy a window, but I didn’t want to get arrested in Port Townsend. All I wanted was a three-minute walk-through of the house to see what the rooms felt like: I like Victorian cottages, but this was 692 square feet. I needed to know whether I could live in a place this small.

Because I was unwilling to commit a property crime, I did not see the house, which is now pending inspection. C’est la vie. Carol and I commenced our road trip back to St Helens, making a stop at a diner en route outside of Olympia, where I had a plate of sweet potato fries and Carol had half a club sandwich. Our server kindly filled both of my water bottles for me and we were on our way again.

The next morning in St Helens, Carol made the kind of breakfast potatoes I would have made, frying up the spicy sausage she had bought in Port Angeles with potatoes, corn, fennel and onion. Carol, Spike and I ate them with an egg apiece before Carol and I drove out to the Sauvie Island farm stand for more produce.

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Categories home cooking, Travel, Uncategorized

House-hunting and other adventures, Part Three

September 8, 2023 //
0

I am a sucker for lakes: when I have wheels at my service and there is a lake nearby I want to see it, even if someone has claimed that the water temperature is 50 degrees F and I have no swimsuit with me.

Before I left the Bay Area for points north I had discovered that there was a restaurant at Lake Crescent Lodge. I sent Carol a link to the menu, told her I’d like to go for a splurge meal there and phoned for a reservation. So, after Carol and I visited a restaurant, a bookstore and a coffee joint in Port Angeles and I tried to make an appointment through Zillow to see a Victorian cottage in Port Townsend the next day, we drove out to Lake Crescent for dinner.

We arrived to find a beautiful, blue lake ringed by mountains. Children in bathing suits swam and played in the water. Adults cruised about in small boats. Carol and I saw a sign for boat rentals.

“Do you like kayaking?” I asked her.

“Spike does,” she answered.

Spike, Carol’s husband, was back in St Helens, Oregon, so we walked to the dinner reservation desk and I gave my name.

We were half an hour early and could have had a drink on the screened porch, but every table was taken. We walked to the dock instead. Unable to resist, I told Carol, “I’m just going to go put my hand in the water.”

I bent down at the shoreline. The water was completely clear, revealing pebbles underneath, and about 70 degrees. If we had not had a pending dinner reservation I might have gone wading, but I restrained myself — I didn’t want to fall in and be unpresentable.

After dawdling and taking photos of each other, Carol and I re-entered the lodge, admiring the dark wood, fieldstone fireplace, multi-paned windows, leather chairs. Someone showed us to a corner table overlooking the lake.

We studied the menu, even though both of us had seen it before. We both wanted a chilled corn and crab soup (when in the Olympics eat Dungeness crab). I eyed an autumnal salad featuring greens, berries, feta and hazelnuts and a dismaying lavender dressing.

When our server returned to the table I outright lied: “I’d like the seasonal salad, but I’m allergic to lavender. Could I have it with another dressing?”

He offered me Caesar dressing, ranch or balsamic vinaigrette. Then I scored points by asking whether he recommended cider, Prosecco or Riesling with my meal. I ordered Riesling, a wine I first had with shellfish when my late father ordered it at Spenger’s Fish Grotto in Berkeley. My father died decades ago in a hiking accident in the Olympics and it made me happy to sip Riesling on his birthday.

Carol ordered salmon. The server brought her corn soup and my salad. I watched her swoon over the soup and wondered why I had not received mine. It arrived as my second course. It tasted vaguely Indian, reminding me of coconut, cilantro and chiles, with sweet bits of crab. We agreed it would be worth returning for this soup alone.

While we ate, our server seated a party of four at the adjacent table. They arrived with double martinis and cosmos in hand and promptly ordered a bottle of wine. They appeared amused by a wedding that was taking place on the dock and suggested that the bride conclude the ceremony by jumping into the water. Then they ordered another round. “They’ll be good tippers,” Carol said.

Carol urged me to get dessert. Nothing stood out, so I asked what kind of ice cream was on offer. Vanilla or huckleberry. No contest: how often am I going to taste huckleberry anything? I urged Carol to taste it. She ate a few modest spoonfuls and half of a chocolate-lined pirouette cookie while I watched the sun sink over the lake.

As we walked back through the lobby, I said, “I’ll take this one,” meaning that of all the buildings I had seen this was the most to my taste. I began dreaming about holding a late summer writing retreat there, housing my students in the rows of expensive little cabins, starting a scholarship fund. Carol wondered aloud if Spike would like to come stay at the lake another year. I bought postcards of the lodge and lake, Carol bought Spike a t-shirt, and we left, driving in a few circles before regaining the highway to Port Angeles.

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Categories Travel

House-hunting and other adventures, Part Two

September 2, 2023 //
0

My realtor and I drove to the first house, a more modern house than I’d prefer. I got my first look at engineered hardwood, which I had never heard of (not a fan). Other than the flooring, the first thing I noticed was an awkward angle in the living room. Why did they build it like that? I’ll never know.

The kitchen was nice: wooden cupboards, plenty of space and light, marred only by characterless modern shelving in a recessed pantry area. This motif was repeated in a bedroom closet. The bathrooms had lovely sinks mounted in beautiful wooden tables, but no closets or medicine cabinets. I do not want to display every item that belongs in a bathroom.

The backyard was large and steep, leading to an alley. I could not walk down the exit stairs, which had no railing.

The picture that house left in my mind was the awkward living room wall, with seven houses to come.

House number two looked like a contemporary house from the outside, all sharp planes and picture windows. The realtor had trouble opening the door. When he got it open, the first thing we saw was cracked yellow linoleum. The house turned out to be an older house, facade notwithstanding, with dated wallpaper, hideous carpets and the first wood-paneled bathroom I’ve ever seen. Why would you put wood paneling in a bathroom?

I tried to find some positives in house number two, but, at this remove, I can’t remember them. It required more fixing up and ripping out than I had hoped to tackle.

I think the third house I saw was the one where the layout reminded me of my maternal grandmother’s house in El Cerrito, California. The front door opened onto the living room. The steps up to the front door needed a railing — I had to put a hand down to crab-crawl up them. The house had small bedrooms without closets: I would have to buy wardrobes for clothes storage. The yards had possibilities. The house’s best feature was that it was a short walk to the public library.

I saw a small Craftsman cottage that my cousin had found on Zillow. It featured a porch swing, good windows and light and the ugliest fireplace surround I have seen to date, a white and gold geometric pattern that my realtor said dated to the 1970s. There are lots of things about the ’70s I do not care to remember. Still, if I ripped that out and replaced some flooring, this house was the most promising yet.

House #5 was a larger Craftsman with its original living room intact, all built-in cabinets, hardwood flooring and multi-paned windows, an original front door with stained glass. The yard was beautifully landscaped as well. It’s “bones” were good and I suppose I could have camped in the lovely living room while repainting, stripping wallpaper, pulling up shag carpeting. This house ended up being my second favorite.

I saw two more houses. I can’t remember the order in which I saw them. One had a nice kitchen with some wooden features and a water view. The main bedroom could be instantly improved by painting the wooden ceiling white. The owners had mulched their front yard with wood chips, which made it look better than all of the dying lawns Port Angeles features in late August.

The other house did not look promising from its photo, a bit like a fairy tale cottage with its peaked roof and arched door. When we stepped inside, however, it was in move-in condition. I liked everything from the table in the breakfast nook to the staging in the kitchen, the cabinet pulls, the flooring. It even had a water view. If I could have written a check that day, I would have wanted to buy it, even though I had doubts about its distance from downtown. Alas, others felt that way because a sale was pending within 48 hours (I had seen the house just after it was listed).

None of the houses I saw felt walkable to me, in terms of their proximity to the business district: I couldn’t have known without visiting that Port Angeles did not have housing downtown: there are expensive houses up on the bluff above the businesses, reached by a steep wooden stairway, a car, or perhaps ropes and pitons.

After touring seven houses I felt weary and discouraged. I wasn’t sure I would be able to remember the features of each house, even with the aid of photos. Which house had the narrow, steep staircase to the second floor? Which one had the bedroom turned into a comfortable office? Could I get to a grocery store from the one otherwise perfect house?

As I pondered these questions, lying on my bed in my motel room, I learned that my old friend Carol was arriving. I opened up the room and went to greet her, showed her to her room in my unit. Although she had driven from St Helens, Oregon, she was eager to drive to town to begin to tour the highlights. I directed her to the menu of the Hook and Line Pub with its Louisiana-style Po’ Boys, gumbo and fish ‘n’ chips.

“Looks good,” she said, and we drove off. She had a bowl of gumbo and I had a delicious shrimp po’ boy. I asked our waitress where to find the strongest coffee in town.

“I don’t drink coffee,” she said. What is it with the servers in this town? Fortunately, a young woman picking up a to-go order gave us the coffee scoop we needed. We ended up with very good coffee, but not before we spent some time browsing in Port Book and News where I bantered with the clerk over the Trump mug shot while he found me a copy of The Lost Journals of Sacajawea by Debra Magpie Earling. The shop had wonderful gift items, too, including stuffed Audubon bird toys that made the birds’ calls when you squeezed them. I wanted to buy the loon, but restrained myself. I bought a box of cards instead. I would be happy to have Port Book and News as my hometown bookstore.

I longed to buy art supplies: because I had focused on having adequate water for my train trips and adequate clothing for hot weather and possible rain, I had not added watercolor pencils and paper to my heavy day pack. I missed them and would have had hours to sketch woods and waterways from the train. Next time.

Carol and I flunked an assignment from our zen and writing teacher. I had promised her we would visit Raymond Carver’s Port Angeles grave, but, after our afternoon coffee, I learned that the cemetery closed at 4:30 on Friday and would be closed all weekend. Oh well. I guess we’ll have to come back.

Our next destination has me scheming to come back as soon as I can for as long as I can.

To be continued.

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Categories Travel, Uncategorized

House-hunting and Other Adventures, Part One

August 27, 2023 //
3

I am sitting at my friend Carol’s dining room table in her 90-year-old farmhouse in St. Helen’s, Oregon. I notice the broad plank stairs leading to her deck off the kitchen: broad treads, low risers. I notice that her shower in the upstairs bathroom has a seat molded into it, handy to wash between my toes, and that the vanity is large and attractive. I notice the wainscoting on the bathroom walls and wonder if Carol chose the salmon pink (I don’t think so…). The bathroom is spacious, particularly after the compact motel bathroom that I had for two nights in Port Angeles to the north. Carol’s bathroom feels like a room, not an afterthought, although I liked the small white pedestal sink in the bathroom of room six at the Travelers Motel.

In the kitchen, the paring knife I pull out to cut a pear from Carol’s tree is sharp, as it should be. I am pleased. I admire two curved wooden stools at the central island.

I have been traveling since Tuesday night, first by train, then by private car, to reach Port Angeles, Washington, which looked like somewhere I might want to move after my elderly mother dies. I was attracted by the location, the year-round farmers market, the amenities (bookstores, restaurants). It has a hospital, a post office, a courthouse. You can get in or out of there by bus, ferry or rail (I don’t drive). So I made contact with a realtor who used to live in California, persuaded my first cousin to stay with my mother for a week, and made an Amtrak reservation.

I left the train in Olympia and stayed the night with a member of a writing group I belong to on Zoom. She, her husband and I drove to Seattle the next day to pick up another writer from our group and we all made our way to Port Angeles by car ferry and highway.

After dinner — finding an open restaurant that could serve us was an adventure in itself — my friends dropped me off at my motel and departed for Sequim and Victoria, B.C.

I had chosen my motel based on some online photos and a description. It looked like I might be able to walk to town from there. Although we drove from downtown Port Angeles to the motel and back twice, that was not enough to orient me, and although I had seen nearby businesses (a bank, a furniture store) I had not seen a restaurant or a grocery store in the vicinity of the motel.

I had a 9:15 appointment with my realtor the next morning and found myself wondering where in hell I could get breakfast on foot in time to get back to the motel in time. I started to feel like I had made a mistake — the town did not seem walkable to me. Friends recommended Google maps and, after a long while, I managed to establish that I might be able to walk to Chestnut Cottage, a restaurant I had earmarked for a breakfast visit sometime during my stay. I lay my head on the pillow after 11:30 and woke at 5:00 AM after a sound, exhausted sleep.

I showered, washed my long gray hair and put on my best approximation of conventional clothing (black jeans, tank top, white gauze shirt, quilted jacket and spangled chartreuse billed cap) suitable for hot weather. I can manage to look slightly more respectable in the winter with the aid of long-sleeved T-shirts, wool berets, crew neck cashmere sweaters and fleece vests, but my summer wardrobe is sparse: I had bought two white gauze shirts the day before I left California from the Good Will and from an East Asian store in Berkeley.

I wrote down brief directions on a piece of paper: left on North Chambers Street, right on East Front, a “fifteen-minute walk.” I added some time because I am a slow walker and because I didn’t know exactly where I was going and headed out in what I thought was the right direction.

I passed a storefront selling salmon jerky, a shuttered bank, various forms of lodging. I saw fast food restaurants in the distance and hoped I wouldn’t have to settle for one before my first stint of house tours. I saw a doe and fawn in a steep grassy yard and some beautiful morning clouds in a blue sky. What I didn’t see was N. Chambers St.

After walking for at least fifteen minutes I concluded that I might have set off in the wrong direction so I turned around and started walking back the way I came. As I passed the jerky joint I saw a woman getting into her car. Hurrying my steps I asked if I could ask her a question.

“Yes,” she said.

“If I keep walking this way, will I get to North Chambers Street?”

“Yes.”

Relieved, I continued past my motel, found my turns and walked on deserted streets alongside Highway 101 aka E. Front St. I saw Chestnut Cottage, waited until all of the cars had passed and crossed the street.

The wooden door gave onto a foyer and a large dining room lined with booths with wooden tables in the center. Perhaps half a dozen people were eating or anticipating breakfast. A waitress led me to a large booth, set down a pint glass of ice water and asked if she could get me a beverage.

“Coffee, please.”

“Medium or dark roast?”

“Dark.”

I drank ice water and read the large menu. I was hungry after my early start and long walk in the beginning of the day’s heat. I ordered an extravagant meal of French toast stuffed with lemon curd. It came on a platter scattered with fresh blueberries, covered with generous mounds of whipped cream. Someone had dusted the slices with powdered sugar and an incongruous pitcher of syrup sat on the edge of the plate.

Really?

Ignoring the syrup, I cut into the most delicious French toast I have ever tasted, pushing aside some of the blanket of cream and spearing a blueberry in every bite. I ate slowly, finished my pint of water and my first cup of coffee, savoring the lemony cream, the soft bread, the tart fruit. I drank my way through another full pint of water and then asked for a box for my remaining French toast. I quizzed the waitress about the strongest coffee in town, but she was not a coffee drinker. I also established that the house-made cinnamon roll was iced with a brown sugar-butter combo and that it was yeast-risen. I bought one to go before leaving.

Back at my motel I brushed my hair, checked the time, and tried to recharge my camera, not knowing whether photos were permissible in the houses. At 9:15 I stepped outside my door, greeted my approaching agent and hoisted myself into his high-mounted truck.

“We have seven properties to see,” he said, handing me a sheaf of paper and a Port Angeles map.

To be continued.

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Categories Travel, Uncategorized

Stone Fruit Crisp

July 1, 2023 //
3

This post is a throwback to my old style of blogging when I posted recipes each week. As I mentioned recently, I am doing a lot of cooking these days, just to get three meals on the table and to provide food that my aged mother might eat.

The hit of the summer has been a simple fruit crisp. I make it with whatever stone fruit is languishing here: I’ve used cherries in every one, along with white or yellow nectarines, peaches, apricots that are too mushy to eat out of hand. You can use plums if you like them (I don’t, but if someone gives me plums or pluots they are probably going into fruit crisp). You can supplement with frozen fruit or canned fruit as stone fruit season fades, but it is glorious right now made with fresh fruit.

Here is how I make it:

I get out an 8″ x 8″ Pyrex pan and make sure the middle rack in my oven is available. I assemble all eligible fruit on the counter by the cutting board, giving cherries a quick rinse in a bowl of water. Keep that bowl handy — you will use it again.

I put the 8″ x 8″ pan on the counter and start slicing fruit into it. I start with cherries, halving them, removing the pit with my thumb and dropping the halves into the pan. When I have used up whatever cherries I have, I cut up nectarines, apricots or peaches into the same pan, in chunks or wedges — it doesn’t matter. I do this until the pan is three-quarters full of fruit — I don’t measure the fruit: if you don’t have enough, you can add a can of sour cherries or peach slices or apricots, or some handy frozen fruit.

When I have cut up all of the fruit I turn the oven on to 375 degrees F. While it heats, I make the topping.

I empty the cherry-washing water into our waste-water bowl. I take the now empty, damp bowl and add

1/2 cup rolled oats

1/2 cup almond flour

1 Tbsp unbleached flour

2/3 cup brown sugar

Dashes of cinnamon and freshly-grated nutmeg. Sometimes a dash of ginger.

Using a pastry blender, I cut in 1/3 cup unsalted butter. That I measure using the handy-dandy guide on the butter wrapper. I blend the butter and dry ingredients until the topping looks uniformly crumbly. I drop the topping by large handfuls on top of the fruit, trying to cover the whole top. It always works — this is an easy recipe.

Carry your assembled crisp to the preheated oven. Bake on the middle rack for 35-45 minutes, depending on how much browning you like: we like ours brown.

Some notes: I use almond flour here because I think the flavor enhances stone fruit and also because it adds a bit of protein to dessert. You can use white or whole wheat flour instead if you like. I add the tablespoon of unbleached flour for binding the topping — you may not need it. I use unsalted butter because that is what we buy. I like cinnamon and nutmeg with fruit. I also like ginger. I haven’t tried cardamom, but it’s only a matter of time.

For me, the level of sweetness in this crisp is ideal. You don’t have to sweeten the fruit because some of the topping sifts down during baking and does it for you. Similarly, the topping thickens the juices. I like the crisp warm or cold. I usually eat it plain, but you could eat it with ice cream, whipped cream, yogurt. I’ve been known to reheat it topped with milk in the microwave, or stir a serving into oats as I cook them. If you like fruit desserts, give it a try.

Just a reminder: I still have openings in my July 15-16 Natalie Goldberg-style writing practice retreat, so, if your idea of a treat is two days devoted to writing, reading aloud and meditation, please consider joining us for $80.00 USD. I also welcome new students to my ongoing Monday AM Practice Group for either July 10, 17, 24 and 31 or August 7, 14, 21 and 28. Each four-week session costs $100.00 USD payable via PayPal at PayPal.Me/yourbusker. Yes, you can sign up for both July and August and the retreat as well if you are hot to write this summer. And no one says you can’t eat stone fruit crisp during your meal breaks!

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Categories baking, desserts

Writing Practice Retreat July 15-16, 2023

June 23, 2023 //
3

Dear Writers,

Here is the schedule for my upcoming writing practice retreat, which will take place between 7 AM and 3 PM Pacific Time on July 15-16, 2023.

All times are given in Pacific Time.

7:00 AM – 7:30 AM Sitting Meditation

7:30 AM – 8:30 AM Break

8:30 AM – 11:00 AM Writing, Reading Aloud

11:00 – 12:00 Break

12:00 PM – 2:00 PM Walking, Writing, Reading

2:00 PM – 2:30 PM Break

2:30 PM – 3:00 PM Sitting meditation

Cost: $80.00 USD. Payable via PayPal at: PayPal.Me/yourbusker. Please make payment by 7 AM Pacific on July 14, 2023.

Questions? Please ask in the comment field.

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Categories Uncategorized, writing practice

Update: What I am doing now (includes summer writing practice classes)

June 17, 2023 //
0

Dear Readers,

I can’t believe it has been nearly six months since I have written to you. I’d like to offer you an explanation and an update. Remember that part of my subtitle is “transformation.”

I stopped writing Johnny Harper stories. I’m not saying I’ll never write one again. It was useful writing Johnny and Sharyn stories in the aftermath of his death. It kept me connected to his community and helped all of us grieve.

But, as I mentioned once, I am currently the sole caretaker for my elderly mother, who is undergoing cancer treatment. In the last five months she has aged about ten years and my duties have increased considerably in that time.

Ironically, The Kale Chronicles began as a recipe blog and I am now cooking up to three meals a day, but I do not have time to blog about food between shopping for it, making it, serving it and cleaning the kitchen. We eat fairly simply. I still shop at the farmers market and Grocery Outlet. Today I made these lovely lemon ricotta pancakes from the New York Times and served them with fresh raspberries. https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1022931-lemon-ricotta-pancakes? For lunch we had leftover lasagna and I don’t know yet what is for dinner tonight.

Anyway, one of the things I have managed to keep doing over the last two years is teaching Natalie Goldberg’s writing practice on Zoom. My flagship group, the Monday AM Practice Group, meets Monday mornings from 9:00 AM to 10:30 AM Pacific Time. We spend our first ten minutes in silent zen-style meditation and go on to write and read aloud to each other without commenting on each other’s work.

I am a dharma heir of Natalie’s and have studied with her twenty-three years straight: I have a good grounding in writing practice, shelves of filled notebooks and two years teaching experience. I enjoy teaching, and appreciate my students and their dedication to the practice.

If you, too, would like to engage in writing practice, I have openings for two four-week sessions:

July 10, 17, 24 and 31, 2023. Registration deadline; Friday July 7, 6 PM Pacific

August 7, 14, 21, and 28, 2023. Registration deadline: Friday August 4, 6 PM Pacific

Each four-week session costs $100.00 USD. You may sign up for either or both summer sessions.

For your fees you get 1) Membership in an ongoing established writing practice group 2) My considerable experience with aspects of writing practice 3) Weekly summaries of what we did in class 4) Weekly suggested writing topics and other optional writing assignments.

If you have been writing and could use a concentrated weekend of sitting meditation, writing practice and reading aloud, you might want to sign up for a Writing Practice Retreat on July 15-16, fees and hours TBA (Watch for an announcement next Friday, June 23).

Meanwhile, stop chewing your pen. Bring it to your notebook and keep your hand moving. Write whatever comes into your head. No good. No bad. No censorship. No rules about grammar or spelling at this stage. In writing practice, we begin again every time and our goal is to record the first thoughts in our mind, to get on the page our memories, sensations, feelings, stories — whatever is foremost in our mind at the time of writing.

A writing topic (Some people call them “prompts,” but Natalie prefers the weightier and broader term “topic”) is a jumping-off point, a place to start. You might start with “I’m looking at…” or “A day in June” or “My mother’s purse.” Then go wherever your mind goes, trusting and accepting that writing will get you where you need to go.

Do you have questions? Comment away and I will answer them. I will also be glad to send you extensive information about the Monday AM Practice Group. Just email me at sharyndimmick@att.net. And if you are ready to sign up for July or August, send me an email to do that.

Thank you for reading. I’m sure I’ll have more stories someday…

Sharyn

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Categories Uncategorized

Johnny and Sharyn: Medical Appointment

January 22, 2023 //
2

Note to readers who follow the Johnny and Sharyn stories: This episode follows chronologically after the episode called “Johnny and Sharyn: Quite the Pair” where we learn that Johnny has injured his feet and I, Sharyn, have fallen and injured my right wrist. It might be helpful for you to reread this to refresh your memory before reading “Medical Appointment.”

After a few weeks of antibiotic cream and a regular soaking regime, Johnny’s feet were still swollen and tender and his skin itched. Despite home treatment and prescribed painkillers, the pain in his feet could keep him awake at night. His friend, Dr. Jeff, recommended that Johnny consult a podiatrist for further treatment. Johnny does not want to go to the doctor, partly because doctor visits are expensive, partly because Johnny prefers to live his life free from the advice of others, and partly because Johnny has a fear of medical procedures. I will come to learn that Johnny, smart and dextrous as he is, is incapable of changing a dressing, or even inserting eye drops in his own eyes. Luckily, he has been blessed with general good health and vigor for most of his sixty-seven years.

I trust Dr. Jeff and so I encourage Johnny to make an appointment with my podiatrist.


“Dr. Hiatt’s a good guy,” I say to Johnny. “He knows what he is doing. He fixed my ankle when no one else could. If you need to see a podiatrist, he’s the one to see. I always tell people with foot problems to go see him.”


“I don’t have insurance.”


“Neither do I, Johnny. He’ll see you anyway. You’ll have to pay out of pocket and there’s a prompt pay discount. You can pay in cash if you want.”


That suited Johnny, who operated with cash as much as possible and often carried lots of bills, meticulously arranged by denomination in his wallet.


“How much will it cost?”

“The initial consultation will be about $100.00, I think.”

“I can pay that,” Johnny says.

“Yes, you can. And you need your feet to get better.”

This is how I met Dr. Hiatt. I had been working as a substitute recreation leader at Willard Park, assigned to help integrate children with disabilities into after school recreational activities. I was supervising an active little girl who loved to run and to climb trees. One day, as I ran across the grass chasing her, I caught my left foot in a hole in the lawn and wrenched the entire foot inward, spraining my left ankle. I hobbled into the Willard Park Clubhouse, sat to fill out an incident report and went home on the bus.

The next time Carl at Willard Park called me for a substitute shift I explained that I could not do it, that my ankle would not permit me to be on my feet for a three-or-four hour shift, that it was still swollen and painful. Carl told me I could still go see a doctor through the City of Berkeley’s Workers’ Comp contractor.

I went down to Alta Bates where I received an x-ray (no fracture) and saw a nurse practitioner. She taught me the basics of sprain care — rest, ice, elevation and compression — and encouraged me to draw the letters of the alphabet with the toes of my left foot. I was dubious about this, given that I have little ability to move my left toes (My entire left foot is affected by cerebral palsy).

“I’ll try,” I said.

Furrowing my brow and looking at my toes, willing them to move, I did my best to draw a capital “A,” “B,” “C.” After I completed the tiny movements I looked at the nurse practitioner.

“Go ahead,” she said.

“I just did it,” I said. “That’s as much as I can do. I have cerebral palsy.”

She blinked.

“I’m not familiar with cerebral palsy,” she said.

Long story short, for the next six years I iced and elevated my left ankle frequently, and often wore an ace bandage wrapped around it. I consulted an orthopedist and got a custom-made brace for it, a plastic orthosis whose edge dug into the back of my calf while the my sore ankle banged against the rigid device whenever I made a movement it was meant to prevent. The swelling went down when I wore the orthosis, but, as soon as I stopped wearing it for any length of time my left ankle swelled to the size of a tangerine. I went through courses of physical therapy and acupuncture as well. I popped ibuprofen tablets like Chiclets, hoping to reduce the inflammation and swelling. Nothing worked: six years after the accident my ankle hurt whenever I walked and was especially painful when I had to walk on a slanted surface or stand for more than half an hour at a time. By this time I had acquired a permanent half-time position as a recreation leader and was required to be on my feet a lot, going on field trips, pushing children in wheelchairs, supervising art projects and taking part in sports. The medical professionals who could not bring me relief said things like “Well, you are getting older” and “Well, you have cerebral palsy.”

I would say in response, “I’ve had cerebral palsy all of my life, but it doesn’t cause pain or swelling. Before I had this accident I could hike, dance, walk four miles. Now I can’t do any of that.”

Eventually I decided I needed to see a sports medicine specialist because sports medicine doctors are dedicated to getting their patients back to their pre-injury condition. A receptionist at a Berkeley acupuncture clinic gave me the number for the Center for Sports Medicine in Walnut Creek. I called and explained that I had an unresolved Workers’ Comp injury, an ankle sprain, and the appointment clerk gave me an appointment to see their foot doc.

Doctor Hiatt was a former basketball player, young, friendly and an excellent listener. I sat on an examination table, telling him the sad tale of my ankle sprain, enumerating all of the things I could not do anymore and all of the things that caused pain. When I finished my recitation, Dr. Hiatt examined both of my feet and ankles, and gently worked my left foot through its limited range of motion. Then he looked up, watching my face as he said, “What if I told you I could make your pain go away and stabilize your ankle?”

I had pursued every treatment anyone suggested while waiting six years to hear those words: when I heard them I started to cry.

Dr. Hiatt had made my left ankle better. After prescribing custom-made orthotics for my shoes, enrolling me in a program of physical therapy and electronic stimulation, after having my nerves tested (all viable), and after an MRI that showed a “mangled and shredded” tendon, Dr. Hiatt received approval for a tendon transfer surgery. He split the tendon that runs by the inside of the foot into three sections, leaving one third of it in place, running another third across the top of my foot and wrapping the last third around the outside of my ankle. After surgery and follow-up physical therapy to restore my strength my ankle was back to normal strength and stability.

Johnny gave me permission to make an appointment for him to see my foot doc at the Center for Sports Medicine in Walnut Creek, a city to the east of San Leandro with a per capita income of $69,000. I usually take public transit to medical appointments, involving a combination of buses, trains, shuttle buses and walking, but Johnny cannot walk at all without pain, so he gets a guitar student to drive him to his appointment. I will meet them at Johnny’s house and go along to provide encouragement and moral support. It is the third week of September and I have not seen Johnny since making a surprise visit to his house in July to check to see if he was still alive after no one had seen him since the end of June.

I watch Johnny hobble down his front step, down the walkway. At the driveway, he supports his weight with an arm on the cyclone fence, crosses slowly to the curb. When I open the car door for him he grabs the outside roof of the car to help lower himself into the passenger seat. I climb into the back seat and sit directly behind him, resting my forearm on the top of the front seat so that he can hold my hand while we drive. Rob parks in the garage beneath the medical center so that we could take an elevator up to the lobby to save Johnny as many steps as we can.

I don’t remember what Johnny wore on his feet the day of his first appointment. I think by then he had bought himself a pair of shoes in a larger size to accommodate his swollen feet, but I don’t remember if he came in wearing socks, slippers or flip-flops. I don’t think he walked in barefoot.

Johnny didn’t own any clothing beyond the basics: black jeans, black long-sleeved dress shirts, black socks, black leather shoes, a heavy black cotton sweater, a black knit watch cap, a black leather jacket and belt. He did have ties in red, green and purple, but he seldom wore a tie. To facilitate the doctor’s examination of his legs and feet, Johnny has taken a pair of scissors and cut off his oldest pair of jeans just below the knee, leaving a raggedy hem. Although he has shaved and showered and combed his silver hair, he looks tough and disreputable in the blue-chaired, carpeted suburban waiting room with his self-fringing pants. He sits as much as possible, getting to his feet only when he is called to the front counter to sign in as a self-paying patient. Today Johnny has no banter for the friendly front office staff and no energy to summon it. I don’t know what is going through his head, but I suspect it is a potent brew of hope, fear and shame, seasoned with foot pain. Johnny hates medical appointments and medical settings and medical terminology — only fear and pain would cause him to consult a doctor for any reason.

Doctor Hiatt greets Johnny with a smile and a firm handshake and introduces himself. Then he focuses on Johnny’s story, watching Johnny’s drawn face. To his credit, Johnny tells Dr. Hiatt that he had sat and slept slumped on a couch with his shoes on for the better part of several weeks before he had removed his shoes and found himself in pain. He tells him he had consulted a physician, who had prescribed an antibiotic cream and then recommended an additional consultation.

Dr. Hiatt listens. Then, as gently as he can, he examines Johnny’s swollen feet and calves.

“You have cellulitus. Your doctor gave you good treatment. He told you to do the right things. I would have done the same things. You are going to get better. What I’m going to do is wrap your legs and calves. The compression will help the swelling go down. When the swelling goes down, the pain will lessen.”

“I’ll prescribe some pain medication for you. And I’ll need to see you once a week for awhile. Do you have any questions?”

Johnny shakes his head. He does not like medical conversations. He does not want to talk about any of this. He just wants to walk pain-free the way he used to.

I listen carefully to everything the good doctor says, listening for telltale words such as “sepsis” and “necrosis.” Thankfully, I didn’t hear any of them. In true Harper fashion, Johnny has dodged a bullet.

Johnny doesn’t say much while Dr. Hiatt wraps his legs and feet, although he winces from time to time and shadows of pain cross his face. I can see that he is tired from the excursion. I do think he appreciates Dr. Hiatt’s positive attitude and he makes a follow-up appointment for the following week.

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Categories Johnny and Sharyn, Uncategorized
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