ABC, at eight months, is adding new foods to her repertoire.
This week, she has enjoyed mushroom ravioli, bucatini with tomato sauce, and caramel panna cotta.
She was especially enthused about me sharing my panna cotta with her.
It’s not surprising.
After all, one eighth of her ethnic heritage is Italian.
With E, L, and T all at home to hold down the fort with Baby ABC and to be on call for Nana and Paco, B and I went up to Skaneateles for an overnight getaway last week.
Although it was short – and cold, although not quite as cold as today – it was nice to be away with just the two of us, visiting some of our favorite little shops and restaurants and enjoying a suite in a favorite B&B, thanks to a weeknight holiday special.
The roads were a bit snowy due to lake effect as we drove up and it was nice to be seated near the fireplace for lunch at Elderberry Pond. We wound up having the dining room to ourselves! Dinner at Rosalie’s was more crowded, but, again, we were seated near the fireplace. I wonder if we looked cold…
We had a bit of a walk in the morning to go to breakfast at the Sherwood Inn, which is now affiliated with the B&B where we stayed. The snow squeaked under our boots as it does when it is significantly below freezing, but we were able to warm ourselves next to the fire before going into the breakfast room, where we enjoyed scrambled eggs, fresh fruit, and amazing pastries from the French style pastry shop on the property. As usual, B drank coffee; I made an exception to my habit of drinking only water, indulging in two cups of hot peppermint tea.
The drive home was clear and everyone back home was fine – and all enjoyed some pastries that we bought for them.
Maybe B and I will make arrangements for another getaway to recharge when other adults are available to cover for us.
Maybe in the spring when it is warmer…
*****
Join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January! Find out more here:
https://lindaghill.com/2018/01/05/jusjojan-daily-prompt-january-5th-2018/
On Thursday afternoon, I arrived in Northampton, Massachusetts for my 35th reunion at Smith College.
Thursday is light on scheduled activities, as many participants can’t arrive until later in the weekend, but it gives those of us who do have the opportunity to get started on heavy-duty reminiscing, as well as catching up on our current lives and loves. We spent hours chatting at our headquarters and over dinner at the Cutter-Ziskind House dining room. We reflected in a special way on the classmates we have lost over the years; our class memorial chairs thoughtfully prepared a compendium of our deceased classmates which brought each of them to mind for us.
Friday presented us with a number of options for presentations and reflections. In the morning, I chose to attend a faculty presentation by Ellen Doré Watson, entitled “How Poems Mean.” It was held at the Poetry Center, of which she is the current director. We filled the room with women (and one spouse of the male persuasion) and read and discussed poems from a thick packet that Ellen had compiled for us, illustrating how poets convey meaning to readers/listeners. After the presentation, I perused the collection of poetry books and journals, spending the most time with the shelves devoted to alumnae poets. I was especially excited to see the books of Anne Harding Woodworth ’65, with whom I have sung with the Smith College Alumnae Chorus. Anne is one of my poetry godmothers, who has always been generous in giving encouragement and advice. I was pleased to have a bit of time to speak with Ellen personally after the gathering had dispersed. I hope to meet her again, perhaps for manuscript review through the Colrain conferences or when I return to campus.
After lunch, a classmate and I walked around campus, enjoying the exercise, our surroundings, and conversation. We were able to visit Haven House, where I lived all four years. It has had extensive renovations since then, so it was interesting to see what had changed – which is nearly everything. I was touched, though, that our wooden mailboxes remain in place, even though students now receive mail through boxes at the Student Center. Even more amazing was that our napkin boxes are still there. In our student days, Haven had its own kitchen and dining room for our residents and those of our sister-house Wesley. We each had our own cloth napkin, which was kept in a labelled cubby near the dining room entrance, taken out and returned there for each meal. The college laundered them every week. Now, dining is concentrated in fewer locations with recycled paper napkins available, but I admit to feeling nostalgic for our student days with homestyle serving most evenings – and candlelight on Thursdays.
Later in the afternoon, I helped to host the Alumnae Chorus reception, along with other Alumnae Chorus members from the class of ’82. We are always on the lookout for other singing alums to join us for events, on campus, in the US, and abroad. We were excited to have Alice Parker ’47 join us, along with a number of her classmates! While we were students, we sang her works, including a commission for the 25th anniversary of Helen Hills Hills chapel. The Alumnae Chorus was honored to sing in a tribute concert for and with her in 2014. Alumnae Chorus will be doing a US event in 2018 and another international tour in 2019, so we have a lot to look forward to!
Next was a class dinner, which President Kathleen McCartney visited. This is our first reunion since she became president. I was so impressed with her warmth and Smith-spirit! Smith is lucky to have her at the helm.
After dinner, we returned to our class headquarters for “A Night of Passion” in which classmates shared what they are passionate about. Language, music, nature, quilting and fabric art, writing, and more – each presentation uniquely fascinating. I participated by reading an excerpt from this blog post about meeting up with Smith friends and two Smith related poems, including “Lessons from Mahler”. I so appreciated the warm reception from my classmates, most of whom remember me, if they do at all, as the organist I was in our campus days. It was so affirming to my current poet-identity to have them react so positively to my poems.
When I fell into my dorm-bed in my room overlooking the lawn where the diploma circle was held after commencement last Sunday, I felt content – and really, really tired. I’m not used to being on the fourth floor…
In these divisive days around the US elections, I have been clinging to any positive news of people reaching out and offering love, hope, and acceptance. I want to share this story from this past Sunday at my church.
There is a parishioner who co-teaches a service learning course at the local community college. Part of this course is a service trip to Haiti, to a village in the northern section of the island. The church has raised funds and donated materials for the projects on a regular basis over the last several years, so she gives us periodic updates.
The group went to Haiti in October. Because of flooding and hurricane Matthew, the village had endured damage to many of the mudbrick and straw buildings, but other repairs had already been made. The water system that protects the people from water-borne diseases was back in service. The two-classroom school that was part of the earlier iterations of the project had re-opened. Two more classrooms will be added soon. They and the adjoining church, which also serves as a community gathering place, are powered by solar panels and there is enough energy storage to allow the children to do homework at the school after dark, using LED lights. Computers that were donated are part of the school curriculum. There is also a newly-opened sewing school with donated machines that is helping local people learn a useful trade.
Last year, land was cleared for a community garden which grows food for the schoolchildren’s lunch. They had been growing staples like corn and beans which can be dried for later use, as there is no refrigeration available. The community had decided to grow rice as well, which wound up being a fortuitous decision; when the floods came, the rice crop continued to grow nicely and they just had their first rice harvest, with many bags of rice in storage for future school lunches.
The school lunch program is especially important as many of the children will eat their only meal of the day at school.
School costs the equivalent of $25 a year, but that sum is too much for some of the families, so there is a new scholarship fund in place to help more children attend school. There is also a plan to add a kitchen with solar ovens to the school, so that the cooks who make the school lunch can also bake breads and pies for sale to benefit the lunch program.
The people in the village are filled with hope, as they work steadily toward making their lives safer and more comfortable with the help of their friends and partners from our area.
We all need hope. We all need to reach out to each other, to help each other, to recognize that every person has inherent dignity.
Thank you to the villagers in Haiti for reminding me of the power of hope.
I have not (yet) fallen off the face of the earth.
Life is increasingly complicated, so I haven’t been able to post much lately.
It’s so complicated that I forgot to post for National Indian Pudding Day yesterday! Here I am belated sharing an Indian Pudding blog post from last year. Enjoy!
I am very pleased to announce that I have another poem published today! The blog of Silver Birch Press has published “Making Aunt Gert’s Indian Pudding” as part of their “My Sweet Word” series. You can find it here: https://silverbirchpress.wordpress.com/2015/10/12/making-aunt-gerts-indian-pudding-poem-by-joanne-corey-my-sweet-word-series/
Enjoy!
Update: The recipe is now available here: https://topofjcsmind.wordpress.com/2015/10/13/indian-pudding-recipe/
For many years, a favorite destination in our area has been the Cider Mill. Every year, from August sixteenth through December first, they make doughnuts and cider for sale. On weekends, they make plain, powdered sugar, and cinnamon doughnuts, and on weekdays, they add chocolate frosted with or without chopped peanuts, maple frosted with or without chopped walnuts, and vanilla frosted with or without shredded coconut. They also sell pies, cookies, jams and jellies, and, once they are in season locally, candy apples, winter squash, and many varieties of apples.
When they are pressing cider, you can walk back and observe them prepping, crushing, and pressing the apples to extract the cider. There is a chalkboard telling which types of apples and in which proportion that day’s cider contains.
In a bit of a strange twist, the Cider Mill is also home to a local professional theater company. The former apple storage space has been transformed into a cabaret-style performance space which mounts a seven-play season with each play running for three to four weeks.(People especially love concessions at the fall plays because they can get fresh cider, hot or cold.)
While the opening day is supposed to be August 16, most years the owners try to get ready and open earlier.
Daughter E, who, mind you, is five thousand miles away in Hawai’i, told daughter T yesterday that Cider Mill was opening today. Note: she is much more attuned to social media than her mother.
So, today, for the first time ever, T and I went to the opening day at Cider Mill. It was amazingly busy with long lines and separate areas for ordering and checking out.
Of course, we bought fresh cider and doughnuts.
Because they were so busy and because it is quite warm and humid, the doughnuts were being frosted and sugared when they were still quite warm. I put our doughnuts out on a rack in the kitchen so that they can finish cooling and so that the frosting didn’t adhere to its neighbor.
Once they are throughly cool, I’ll put them back in their waxed bakery bag to await tomorrow’s breakfast.
Although chocolate or maple frosted doughnuts also make a mighty fine dessert…
The Algonquins who were native to my region named the full moon this time of year the strawberry moon.
Usually at this time of year, we are enjoying plentiful local strawberries. For many years, I would go to a local farm to pick quarts and quarts of berries. We would share some with family and then I would put the kitchen in full-blown strawberry mode. Strawberries on cereal or with yogurt for breakfast. Strawberries on fresh leaf lettuce or baby spinach with pecans and goat cheese. Strawberry shortcake. Fresh strawberry pie. Strawberry rhubarb soup. Strawberries on ice cream. Strawberry-rhubarb pie, crisp, or cobbler. Just eating them and enjoying their sweet fragrance.
The last few years, I haven’t been picking myself, but buying them from the local farmstands. We don’t often buy strawberries other than when they are local. Supermarket strawberries from hundreds or thousands of miles away just don’t compare to what our local berries taste like.
I know that the farms will have berries when the wild strawberries that grow in our yard ripen.
This year, the berries are late.
After a mild winter, the spring was chilly. While we had some wet weather in the earlier part of the spring, we are now in a dry spell. It’s all combined to make the local berries late to ripen.
Last week, I was able to find some berries from a farm about sixty miles from here and, yesterday, I finally found some from Broome-Tioga.
There is a fresh strawberry pie setting in the refrigerator. After supper, we will bring it up to Nana and Paco’s to share with them.
It’s best to eat it the day it is made.
It won’t be a hardship for the five of us to finish it.
It’s Saturday morning and I just now looked at Linda’s prompt. I was so excited that the prompt was “food”! Maybe Linda is psychic, because it is exactly what I would like to write about today.
B and I are on a getaway for a few days and food was a very important part of the plan. On Thursday, we travelled to Deerfield, Massachusetts to stay at the Old Deerfield Inn. We had never stayed there before because it is pretty pricey, but we had discovered that on a weeknight in the off-season, it was affordable.
We had, however, eaten at their restaurant, Champney’s, before, and that was a big factor in deciding to go there. B had chicken piccata , which was a special that night, and I had a steak and ale pot pie, which was made with a local beer and local root vegetables. It was totally amazing. And very hot, because it came baked in its own little iron deep-dish. It took a long time to eat because it stayed very hot.
One of the reasons we love to eat at Champney’s ,though, is that they make an excellent Indian pudding. As people who read Top of JC’s Mind may recall, we have a thing for Indian pudding. It’s a tradition in B’s family and I have even written poetry about it! (Poems here, here, and here with recipe here.) Being pretty full after our main course, B and I savored a serving of Indian pudding together. Amazing!
Like most inns, breakfast in the morning was part of the deal. I had fresh local yogurt with fruit and homemade granola and a half order of French toast with local maple syrup. B had French toast with scrambled eggs. Then, we ambled out for the day.
We were heading to Lenox and went via Northampton, where I attended Smith College. We had some lovely soup in Thorne’s market – potato leek for me and sausage lentil for B – but then moved on to the real place I want to eat – Herrell’s Ice Cream. Herrell’s was new to Northampton when I was at Smith in the late ’70s – early ’80s and makes astonishingly good ice cream, or, as New Englanders are wont to say, wicked good. I chose malted vanilla, which is one of my all-time favorites. I was afraid B, who is lactose intolerant, would have to settle for sorbet, but they had a couple of “no-moo” flavors, so B got to have peanut butter no-moo. Yum!
We proceeded to Lenox to stay at the Cornell Inn, where we have often stayed on getaways. We had made a dinner reservation at Alta, one of our favorite places in Lenox. B and I shared a salad that featured candied pecans and fried Brie and moved on to our main courses. I had trout, which was excellent. B thoroughly enjoyed pork cheeks braised in cider and served over squash and other seasonal vegetables. If it weren’t a Friday in Lent, I would have sampled it. He said it was great. We wondered if they were really pork cheeks, but I think they must have been as Alta is very particular about all of their menu items.
This morning, we enjoyed breakfast at the Cornell Inn. Breakfast is a highlight of any trip here, as there is always a lovely variety of homemade options. Today’s selection included broccoli fritatta, berry crisp pancakes and cinnamon french toast, mixed berry and oatmeal blackberry muffins, and fruit plate with yogurt on the side. So good!
Now, I am writing this post, but, in a bit, we will check out and head up to Williamstown to stay with a high school friend. Her husband is a (mostly) retired chef, so more great food is on the agenda!
Hope I didn’t make anyone hungry. (I also offer apologies to all my vegetarian friends for rhapsodizing over meat-containing dishes.)
*****
Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week was “food”! Yum! Join us! Find out how here: http://lindaghill.com/2016/02/26/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-feb-2716/
Two blogger friends, Tric of My Thoughts on a Page and Jay Dee of I Read Encyclopedias for Fun, have done recent posts about their (and others’) and their countries’ experiences of Christmas. Tric is from Ireland and Jay Dee is from Canada but has lived in Japan for a number of years. They each asked for comments about their readers’ Christmas experiences, so this post is doing triple duty – for my own readers and to put in the comments for Tric and Jay Dee.
This Christmas, my husband B and I are very happy to have our older daughter E and her husband L visiting from Honolulu and our younger daughter T home on break from grad school in Syracuse, New York, about a 90 minute drive from here.
With most of the holiday tasks under control, we started Christmas Eve day with a trip to a morning showing of the new Star Wars movie, a second time for each of us, although a first time seeing it together. In the afternoon, we did some chores, finished up the gift-wrapping, and rested or took naps to be ready for a late night.
At 5 PM, we were happy to be able to livestream a radio broadcast of Holidays at Hendricks, from Syracuse University. Although T is in grad school at SUNY-Environmental Science and Forestry, she is eligible for music activities at Syracuse University which is directly adjacent to the ESF campus. This year, she is singing with the Hendricks Chapel Choir, so it was extra-special to hear her choir sing on this program.
After dinner, B and I made date nut and cranberry breads for Christmas breakfast and listened to E and T sing Christmas carols, accompanied by L on the piano. So beautiful! I managed not to cry, but barely.
About 11:00, B headed to bed and E, T, L, and I headed to Holy Family for midnight Mass. The church which we attended when the girls were young and in which we all served in music ministry is closed, but we were happy to attend Holy Family where our former music director and good friend landed, along with the music library and handbells from our old parish. T sang and rang handbells at Holy Family before she headed off to grad school. There are enough people we know there that it felt like a homecoming.
There was a half hour prelude by the Genesis (adult) choir, handbell choir, and guest trumpeter, followed by midnight Mass. Father Clarence’s homily brought together the Scripture and our current world, as good homilies do. He reminded the congregation that the Holy Family fled to Egypt for safety as refugees do. He asked what would have happened if Egypt had closed its borders and sent them back. He did not have to mention Syria to get the point across. He also spoke about our need to seek peace, even in the face of violence in the world, by referring to a French man who lost his wife in last month’s Paris attacks but refuses to be bitter.
After a short night’s sleep, most of the household was up at 6:00 to start on Christmas dinner, the gentlemen taking the lead. L was making bread and B made the lasagna, using the recipe from my mother. We started making lasagna for Christmas Day back when my daughters and I used to be involved in music ministry for a Christmas morning children’s mass. We would assemble the lasagna the day before to bake after we got home from church to eat Christmas dinner at noon. Now we continue that tradition.
Between kitchen tasks, we ate breakfast and opened stockings and gifts. E and L went for a walk in the way-warmer-than-it-should-be December weather. A bit before noon, Nana, Paco, and Grandma arrived. Everyone enjoyed dinner, followed by Christmas cookies, fruitcake, and fudge. There was another round of presents. E and L made presents for the grandparents. E made a counted cross-stitch of a row of girls – Japanese for Grandma and Hawaiian for Nana and Paco. L made a paról for each home, including ours. A paról is Filipino star-shaped Christmas ornament, traditionally a bamboo lantern, although these were made from paper. L made them for us in honor of his parents’ home country, where they grew up before immigrating to the UK as young adults.
We had a lovely visit, which was followed by some more family visits facilitated by technology. E and L visited with his family in London by skype. December 25th is also L’s father’s birthday, so there was an extra reason to call. Only being five time zones away instead of ten as they are in Honolulu was a help. B and I talked by phone with B’s brother. We didn’t talk to my sisters, but they will be arriving in town tomorrow for the continuation of our Christmas celebration.
We played Apples to Apples this evening and have been watching some television while I write this post. I don’t know if our Christmas is a typical US one or not, but it is special for us, especially because we were able to have both daughters here, something that becomes rarer as they get older and head out on their own. I hope other people have had lovely days filled with family, food, and love.
When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.
Joanne Corey 