not again!

I'm surely not the only one to say today -- man, it's hot out there!

Loath that I am to live with the AC running, on days like this, I am so grateful for it! How incredibly lucky to live in a century old house with a terrific air cooling system! (Much of the credit goes to Ed, who reworked the duct system.) Still, I do not hate being outside, even with high humidity and temps pushing the mid nineties. So, breakfast on the porch:






(With such high humidity, the day appears misty and mild, with muted colors and fuzzy contours...)






And, too, I bike to my medical appointment (another check up -- of the yearly kind). My doc says -- I saw you on the schedule and I said to myself: my God, a year has passed already!
Glad to be a reminder of how age creeps up on you.

We then patter on about biking in hot weather -- as if, in our middle age (well, his middle and my older-middle) we need to pat ourselves on the back for belonging to the active set. But as I brag about biking from the farmette and he brags about biking up Old Sauk hill, he pauses and says -- I am sometimes passed by even older people who whiz by as if a hill was nothing, nothing at all for them.

An admission of our imperfections.


The ride from farm to city, then back again, is just lovely at this time of the year. There is the lake, of course.





And in the country stretch, there is the prairie, invading the strips along the path, filling them with graceful grasses and an assortment of the loveliest flowers.

This, too, is Wisconsin.






In the late afternoon, Ed and I finally get it together to head out to Paul's cafe. It's been nearly two months!
But before we go I say to Ed -- let me just pay my credit card bill. I'm fanatically meticulous about attending to this at the midpoint of each month.

I cannot get into my (online) account.
I try again. And again. Finally, I call customer service.
You're using the wrong login info, they tell me.
No I'm not. i KNOW my info on this account perfectly. (Indeed I do: I just changed all my logins when my identity was stolen in March. I keep good track of these things.)
You changed it all again recently -- the service rep tells me indulgently, as if I am just one of those teetering old people who got overwhelmed with too many security logins and passwords and can't keep it all straight anymore.
I haven't been to this account for ten days and back then, it worked perfectly!
I can almost sense his eye roll. My screen shows that you logged in just yesterday morning. At 6:45.

Damn. That wasn't me. My impersonator is at it again.

And so I spend the next hour reviewing all my accounts everywhere, changing passwords, securing my credit report, checking it all and oddly, oddly -- there is no tampering with anything, no use of my credit cards (yet), nothing except this one tiny detail -- the thief changed my login IDs. Ever so slightly, but s/he changed it. Why??

Someone out there is messin' with me!

Never mind, I'm on it! And besides, I have all these beautiful flowers to admire.






And to take care of. This heat is brutal. I spend a zen hour or two throwing water at them. Later, much later, when I come in to plate us some leftovers for supper, I can hardly remember what the issues of the day may have been. The flowers are holding their own. Life is good.

unusual twists, promised recipes

And then there were four

Ask me where I would like to go for breakfast and I'll say -- front porch! And so this morning, I soldiered forward into the raspberry patch (unfortunately, I did not pull the strings tightly on my netting garb and so for a while, I had a mosquito trapped inside my head cover, buzzing incessantly while I tried to see beyond him and pick the berries)...











...to bring in newly picked berries for breakfast (they smell of sunshine), then reached for the granola I 'd made just yesterday, and, too, for the coffee,  for the kefir -- in other words, the usual... And there we were on the porch again, Barbara joining Diane, Ed and me for a last meal at the farmhouse.










And so ended a weekend of sweet encounters with friends.


A summer Monday is a summer Monday


I had two appointments downtown today -- one with a student to review her exam and one in a clinic where I was to have a rather routine heart stress test. I'm old, I do insane things like dig ditches and climb mountains and so the doctor suggested that it might be a good idea to test the limits of my various physical exertions.

Being rather frugally inclined these days I parked the car at the hospital (in the meanwhile, Ed spent the better part of the day fixing Rosie and her heat flashes) and walked to my office. A good 2.5 mile trek, but hey -- free parking is free parking.

I was rewarded by seeing these two newcomers to campus.





I veered then to the lakeshore path -- the one I used to bike on when I lived in the condo to the west of campus. Pretty! And a tad more refined in the months when the students are away for the summer.





Not much has changed here. Well, maybe some things have taken on a more modern twist.





My student was late and my meeting went past the half hour I had estimated for it and so when I finally left my office to return to the hospital (for the stress test), I was, in fact, nearly running.

Did I tell you? It's hot and humid today in Madison.

The appointment instructions tell me I'm not to drink or eat anything in advance of the test. Well now, should I faint before I even get there?

Okay, I'm at the hospital. More or less on time. Pant, pant. The technician asks me if I have any concerns and I tell her that frankly, I'm already stressed, having run here in 90 degree weather to be on time. I tell her I'm thirsty. But, her protocol has it that I am more likely to faint and choke if I am hydrated than if I am not, so I remain thirsty until the completion of the test.

Have you had one of these tests? You know what they're like: you're on a treadmill and they keep increasing your speed and tilt, until you exceed any possible reasonable heart capacity and then they watch to see if you survive or have a heart attack. (If your heart goes nuts, then they conveniently have a hospital handy and you can marvel at the speed with which you'll be admitted and hooked you up to various monitoring devices.)

I get rather competitive on treadmills. If the technician tells me she did level five without great effort, I'm going to have to outperform that.

As I m puffin' away, she turns chatty. So, did you go anywhere this summer?
Mountain puff puff puff hiking puff puff puff in Slovenia. I figured that would put a pause into the back and forth.
So let me get this straight -- you're having a stress test after mountain hiking? This makes no sense!

How can I explain to her that for me,  teaching places more stress on the heart than any run up a mountain!

No matter, I've reached the heart rate goal. I tell her I've had enough.



This Old House

What's that buzz? Ed asks in the evening.
Funny you should mention it. I was curious, too, only I figured it's normal but beyond my comprehension. There are so many mechanicals at the farmhouse that I just don't get.

We walk down to the basement.
Oh no... He dashes upstairs and shuts off the water pump. I pretend I'm unfazed. I want to emulate the demeanor of a person who is never on edge, never stressed (in other words -- an Ed).
After a while I ask, without a hint of worry -- what's happening?
The water pressure is way high.

Okay, so the pressure is high.

Is the house going to explode??? I ask, less calmly.

He grins. No.

I think about the number of things that can fail in a house that is 100 years old. My list alone exceeds the number of fingers on my hands. And then some.


Recipes

Several readers asked for clues on how to cook foods that last a lifetime. So here are the two I mentioned yesterday:

"Crunchy chicken"

This one is (more or less) from the NYTimes 60 Minute Gourmet (publication date: 1981, where they are called Supreme de Volaille Milanese, because in Milan they like to put bread on their meats). It's easy, but it dirties a lot of plates. Oh well -- my kids have always loved it.

Chicken breasts, boned, skinned and cut into filets (meaning, cut in half so they're thin)
flour
1 egg for every 2 whole breasts
breadcrumbs (for sophisticated palates, add some lemon zest here. Or parmesan cheese. Or just breadcrumbs)
canola oil (or some other veggie oil) and butter if you want to stay true to form

So trim those breasts. Keep them neat and more or less same sized. Then, line up your bowls (or plates):
The first one will have flour: say a couple of TBSP per breast.
The second one will have the egg, with a dash of water and a splash of oil, all mixed up with a fork or something.
The third one will have the breadcrumbs (with the cheese or lemon zest, or plain)

The fourth plate will be there, ready and waiting for the finished breasts.

So you dip each filet in each bowl: first with the flour, then in the egg mixture, then in the breadcrumbs. Then lay it flat on the ready final plate. Pat down the crumbs so that they adhere.

Heat some oil (and butter) in a large skillet. I mean about 4 TBSP per 2 whole breasts. It's tempting to skimp here on the oil. Don't.

You'll be cooking the breasts for about 7 minutes on each side. The nice thing is that you can bread the filets ahead of time and put them in the fridge until you're ready to cook 'em. So sort of do ahead.

That's it. The kids liked it with macaroni and tomatoes on the side. These days they prefer risotto.


Greek Shrimp Salad (and separately, Couscous, even if you are not a couscous fan -- this one works well with the salad!) (credit: Gourmet magazine August 1991)

Now, the nice thing about this recipe is that it is like Ed's hair: extremely forgiving for any mistakes or omissions you may make. And it is easy to double, triple, etc etc.  In Madison, the Whole Foods store sells 2 lb bags of frozen cleaned shrimp for $14.99. These are fantastic for the salad! I generously plan a half pound per diner, but that will give me lots of leftovers. Which are great.

So, the original recipe is for 1.5 lb shrimp. Do your math and adjust it as you wish.

6 TBSP olive oil
1.5 lb smaller (but not tiny!) shrimp (shelled, deveined)
2 TBSP lemon juice
1 tsp white wine vinegar
1/4 tsp grated lemon zest (I use more)
1 TBSP fresh oregano, minced, (or 1 tsp dried)
6 oz of Feta, crumbled
3 tomatoes, seeded and chopped
1 c. thinly sliced celery
1 c. Kalamata or other black olives, cut into slivers. I buy canned to make it easy. And I use less than that.


For the shrimp: in large skillet, heat 2 TBSP of oil over moderately high heat until it just begins to smoke and sautee shrimp, stirring, until they are just firm.
Transfer them to large bowl. Do this in batches if you're using more than 1.5 lbs.
For the dressing: in small bowl, whisk together lemon juice, vinegar, zest, oregano and salt and pepper to taste; whisk in the remaining 4 TBSP of oil (until emulsified).
For the final prep: Toss the shrimp with the dressing, the Feta, the tomatoes, the celery and the olives until the salad is combined well. You can do all this up to a day in advance. Just cover and chill.

The Couscous:

1 TBSP butter (per each cup of couscous)
1/2 tsp salt
1 c couscous
1/3 c of pine nuts, toasted lightly (just put them in the oven for a few minutes. Watch carefully, once they start browning, they go quickly toward burning!)
1/4 c minced parsley
1/3 c thinly sliced scallion
1 TBSP white wine vinegar

In saucepan, combine butter, salt and 1 1/2 c water (for every cup of couscous), bring liquid to boil, stir in couscous. Let it stand, covered and off heat for about 5 minutes. Fluff with fork and stir in pine nuts, parsley, scallion and vinegar.
They say you can do this 6 hours in advance. I'm on the second day of it and it's fine!

And there you have it!

dinner

Careful what you make in your early adult years because, unwittingly, it may become your signature dish for decades -- up until your retirement age and maybe even beyond.

So that I never knew, when I first made breaded chicken cutlets for the little tykes, that I would be making them still now (can you make crunchy chicken, please?). Or that the craze for gnocchi would pass, but risotto would remain a coveted dish forever. Or that the FBI cake (chocolate with whipped cream) would be the go-to birthday cake for years, until it came to be replaced by the chocolate orange almond cake. Or that a party staple would be the Greek shrimp salad with couscous (Gourmet Magazine, 1991). These are not complicated foods -- that's a prerequisite. You don't go back to your huge creative efforts again and again. Mille feuille -- only once. But the good, fresh and honest stuff -- they can be yours for life.

And so if I know my older girl and her husband will be joining my two friends, and Ed and myself for dinner on the porch, I'll reach for that great do ahead Greek shrimp dish, so that within a couple of hours I can have a meal ready, requiring nothing more of me once everyone arrives and takes their place on the porch, but to sit down and join them.





How many such beautiful evenings do we get in the course of a summer? When swallows, then bats swoop down like fighter jets in the darkening sky (depleting the mosquito population for the next day)? When every last crumb of rhubarb cake disappears, because you've stayed out so long that you get hungry all over again?

Early in the evening, we take a photo on a timer, my two friends and I. We've done many such photos of the three over the years. Here it is, this year's edition. To be updated, one hopes, in the years ahead. On the porch maybe, just before a summer supper of Greek shrimp salad.

summertime

There is always one day in a season that brings together all the best parts of that season (and a few of the not so best parts, but these pale by comparison). This is it -- you'll find yourself saying. The quintessential spring day! ... or winter day!

Today has summer written all over its face. Not too late in the summer -- not August summer, where the trees get a hint of tiredness in them and the wasps pick up the pace and you almost feel the urge to go school supply shopping, even if you're no longer a kid. So no, not August summer, but, instead, the true midsummer, the peak of summer, the most beautiful part of summer where you're eating the fruits and vegetables from the garden and your snipping flowers for your kitchen table and the sun is out, but not so much that you need sunscreen just to walk from the kitchen to the porch.

On the pesty side, it is also the time of mosquitoes. True, this year's crop ranks 5 on an annoyance scale of 1 to 10 and I can stand outdoors for hours on end with a hose and not be bothered, but I cannot, for example, go pick raspberries for breakfast without protective gear. Like this:






The quintessential summer day has us eating breakfast on the porch. That's a given.






It's a time (yet again) to take a look at the flowers. Assess the watering/weeding needs. A good summer day will have me out with a hose, but not too much on my hands and knees pulling out quack grass or creeping charlie. That's less fun. So, moments of admiration:






Walking down toward the sheep shed - more flowers. (Maybe I should work in a greenhouse: I really really love flowers.)






On this particular Sunday, Diane and I go to yoga class. The yoga room looks out on the prairie, my favorite teacher is there to guide us through the poses  and to make it even better -- my yoga buddy from Madison is there as well. I have goodness on both sides and a view of a meadow. Bliss.


At the farmette, I take stock of our growing crop of foods. Now that we're pumping water again, I can finish watering the grape vines, the cukes, the tomatoes, the fruit trees. Our cucumber crop isn't exactly exploding (yet), but there are good signs that things are progressing.






And the tomatoes are multiplying as I speak.






(The corn is a tad on the short side still, but we planted late!)






Of course, I can just cast a look  at the farmers to our north for a view of really productive vegetable farming.






But on a quintessential summer day, a truly mid-summer day, I have no complaints. The beetles haven't eaten the roses or the leaves off the cherry yet. The raspberries, buried that they are in who knows what weedy growth, still are throwing out bursts of fruit. And the flowers... I know, I know, I need to let go of this theme already. But the flowers! (My new desktop photo will have lavender in it. Here's today's favorite: )






It's hard to imagine a finer summer Sunday. Really. This is, I think,  as beautiful as it gets.

Saturday, late

The upshot? Crisis averted.

I'm out in the young orchard, feeling pretty smug. The sun's out and that means that if I stand just so, in its full brightness, I don't even have to use the mosquito zapper. I can water the tomatoes, the grapes, the cucumbers and peas, the corn and, most importantly, the baby fruit trees in peace.

I think about the beauty of the day -- of how good summer always is, even in all its imperfections (heat or rain, bugs, etc etc). Minutes earlier, Ed and I had taken a quick bike ride and even though I usually wince at views of endless fields of corn and soy, this time, it all looks so rich and bounteous:






And, too, I'm seeing wheat in these parts. The choice crop of my childhood years in Poland.







(And let's give another nod to the tiger lilies, growing in the wild, around roadside mailboxes...)






And now, with all this behind me, I'm here, watering the newly planted orchard...  until I feel the water from the hose slow down to a mere trickle.

Damn. Is someone taking a shower? (That's my immediate reaction. As if taking a shower would bring this stream to a halt.)

At the farmhouse, Ed frowns when I tell him the hose has ceased to spit out water. He goes down to the basement to inspect the water pump and I follow, as if I could help, give advice, pass the proper tool.

As you'll know from the first sentence of the post, eventually, he finds the failure, goes to Farm & Fleet just before they close and buys the needed part and makes the proper adjustments. But it never seems so straightforward at the time.  I had visions of a weekend, nay, a week without water. Given the closeness of the city, that's not a total tragedy, but it is a miserable inconvenience. Especially when you have houseguests for the weekend.

My friends take us out to dinner and that surely is a good distraction from the issues at home.





I use the restaurant's bathroom, wondering when we'd next have a functional toilet back home.

Not so far off. As I retire for the day, the water is back on, the toilets are flushing, the farmette is restored to its wonderful functional self.

You appreciate water especially on days that you almost have to go without it.

Saturday, early

Every time I ride that lawn mower over the bumpy terrain of the back fields and, too, the young orchard, I walk away feeling my insides have been jiggled right out of me. Still, I offer to help Ed with the mowing because if we do it more often, rather than less often, I'm convinced we'll eliminate at least some of the mosquito hiding ground.





Though this morning, I was reminded that there is one safe haven where they seem to really like to snuggle and that is the sprawling, weedy raspberry patch. We were going to replant the entire patch this summer, but the armies of bugs moved in during our absence and now we have to wait until they move on to their eternal resting ground (in September?), because you can't get me to enter a mosquito filled raspberry patch!

...unless I have friends in town and I know there are the luscious fruit ripening on the bushes and after all, how bad can it be?






Awful. So a half bowl is all I could gather (and yes, I have bug garb and yes, I should have worn it).






Never mind, good enough -- we have other fruits and granolas and strong coffee...






...and all good things for a breakfast on the porch (where we admire the swooping swallows outside)...






...Followed by a second breakfast with two younger generations of family (not mine -- Barbara's) -- downtown and as long as we were there, we poke around one of the newer ventures of that younger generation -- a butcher shop that is not really just a butcher shop but also a place where you can get homemade pickled cauliflower, and a sauerkraut that has a name ("Stimulus Package"), and a Vermut from Catalonia.











The second breakfast was almost followed by lunch at the farmhouse until I caught myself -- you cannot go from one meal to the next, to the next in rapid succession without moving much -- except for when you move on the mower and your insides jiggle afterwards. So I sit down to jot down an Ocean post instead.

And of course, because it's summer, I give you, too, this look onto the flowers that border the farmhouse. To the side:










To the front:

Friday, late

It is the first time this year that I throw charcoal down and light up the grill. Grilled chicken, marinated in a summery vinaigrette and sauced over with tiny tomatoes, grilled corn, grilled avocado for the salad. And, too, I open Sorede rose wines. Not from this year -- I brought nothing back this year -- but from years past, saved for the day when I would have people here who love rose wine as much as I do.










We sit out on the porch from the time of bright sunshine, until the last bit of light has faded, moving seamlessly from one plate of food to the next (garden rhubarb buttermilk cake for dessert), from one topic to the next, from one hour to the next. Ed comes out to eat with us and I am sure he has some degree of amazement that anyone can talk this much at a meal, or maybe he doesn't -- maybe he's seen this before, this stream of words that comes from friends living too far apart and relying for too long on scant email messages to catch up on what's really cookin' inside the head, inside the soul.





The porch accommodates my solo hours of work, and too, breakfast, always that wonderful breakfast where Ed and I nibble on fruits and launch plans for the day, and now this -- a summer meal when Barbara and Diane come to town.

Friday, early

To shock the daylights out of anyone and everyone, I am writing this while the sun is still settling into its afternoon trek against the western sky. (Regan, over in Denmark, in her comment to yesterday's post, asked for more frequent Ocean notes and though she probably wasn't entirely serious, I'd do a lot to make Regan's day brighter, so there you have it.)

And frankly, the clock has no great value for me anymore.

We live by Isis time.

Okay, so he (the cat) has been a tad under the weather lately (for example: standing up on our bed in the middle of the night and letting out a howl that means only one thing: I'm about to throw up. And then he does. And it's like having babies: we're cleaning up dirty linens in the middle of the night). Regardless. His summer schedule is for the birds.

He settles down, or goes out, or stays in but then asks to go out and so the clock moves forward, even as we are arrested in some state of perpetual uncertainty -- will he settle down? Will he go down to the sheep shed and stay there?

When I do not have to go in to my office the next day, of course, none of this really matters. We adjust. House cleaning, for example, was at 5:30 this morning.

(After, we do our morning inspection of the farmette. Of the flowers and today, of the tomatoes, too. And if you think the tomatoes look a little wild -- well yes, I admit it. Somehow the orderly rows disappear on us after the plants grow to their adult size.)











But breakfast is, as always, around 9 and on the porch and absolutely wonderful on this pretty pretty July morning. (As I run in to pick up more foods, I glance out at the porch through the kitchen window: there's a slice of heaven out there, that's for sure.)






I work then. On the porch, reading law materials, mulling over life and law and law and life and the hours pass.

View to the front of me:





View to the side:



 


And when the sun comes out good and strong and I completely ignore the sage advice of not watering during the hot afternoon (you waste 25% of what you throw on the ground) because these days it is the ONLY time we can stand for hours on end and not be eaten alive by mosquitoes. (They do not like sunny afternoons.)

So I water and I think about how much satisfaction I get from giving plants water. I imagine their little hands reaching out, just to get touched by a cool stream of water and I want to get every last finger (root) of theirs wet and so I stand there for a long long time, moving slowly from one plant to the next (and yes, we have hundreds) and if you want to tell me to put down a soaker hose instead, I'll nod and say -- I know I know, but where is the pleasure in putting down a soaker house when you can, instead, stand and send streams of water to thirsty plants?


Tonight, Diane, my friend from up north (and west) is driving down for the weekend and Barbara, my friend from down south (and west) is also in town for the weekend and we will have the rare pleasure of all three being in one place at the same time. For three evenings in a row.

But in the meantime, I'm on the porch and the flowers are there for me to admire and the swallows are darting after the bugs (thank you!) and life is very fine, for those reasons alone and for so many other. Even if I know that for you, Regan, it could be just a touch better than it is right now.

Thursday

Let me start with supper, because it shows how disjointed, scattered, uncoordinated our days are right now (at the same time that it all pulls together to create a terrific whole).


 


Leftovers (broccoli soup, sauteed cabbage...), the market produce (beans, La Baguette bread), the pulled together spinach salad, oh... all of it. Neither this nor that, not anything that hangs together and yet -- we really do like it this way.

Market produce, by the way, comes from our local Thursday evening market. We scoot up to it just before it closes and lo! There's our own wonderful, irrepressible farmer Lee!





We walk away with lots of free foods and flowers from her...





... and, too, a bit of sad news -- she may have nowhere to plant next year, as her principal landowner told her -- no more farming on this land.

Perhaps we did not understand.  Let's hope we did not understand. (Farmer Lee speaks limited English.) But she continues: Planted strawberries. No. Next year no.

We want to offer her our land, but do we even have enough for her to continue to farm here? And if she can't farm those fields across the road from us -- what will become of them? Is it back to soy and corn? Endless fields of soy and corn? Or a new development?


Breakfast.






A morning greeting to the flowers of the farmette. Today's highlights:











Then a day dowtown, on campus. I know -- I'm not supposed to be working in summer months. That's the theory. The reality is quite different.

And oh, how empty Bascom Mall  (where the Law School looks out) is now! Where are all the students who strip off all sweaters, jackets and socks at the first blush of srping? One -- I count one such body.





We have a run of dry summer days before us. The winds are down so the mosquitoes are back up and out again and still, we are in the thick of summer -- that time of blossoms and bats, fireflies and butterflies. Summer!

And that is a good thing.