My puzzle problem

Here's the thing:  if there is a jigsaw puzzle around, I cannot leave it alone. 

I come by this naturally.  My grandfather and mother were the same way.  My uncle L (the highly disciplined English professor) won't even come in the house if there's a puzzle out.  My other uncle D (the Latin major turned auto mechanic) will come in the house but won't leave until he finishes the puzzle.

We have rules about puzzles. Find all the straight edge pieces and put together the border first. Then start on a particular color: pick all those pieces out, organize them in rows by shape, shading and grain, and get as many of them together as you can, then move on to the next section. Most importantly, looking at the picture is cheating. It's simply not done.

One year for Christmas, my grandfather took two big puzzles, mixed all the pieces up together, split them between two Ziploc bags, and gave one to Uncle L and the other one to Uncle D.  Uncle L put his away in a closet.  Uncle D worked for weeks on his before he figured out the joke.  (My grandfather was perverse that way.)

One year for her birthday, my father gave my mother a puzzle that was round and solid yellow.  (My father was perverse that way.)

My mother finished that puzzle.  (So was she.)

I bought this puzzle for Christmas vacation because I wanted to be a slug for a week.  And I'm not leaving the house much anyway, since the left side of my face still looks a little blotchy from the great scalding turkey stock splash incident of December 26. 

And I just finished it.

Remarkably, all of the pieces are here.  I say "remarkably" because my mother's cat early on discovered the joys of reaching onto the card table and pulling down entire sections of the puzzle, then carrying them off in his mouth.

It's done. 

Now I can return to my regularly scheduled programming.

Recipe: Potato, Ham, Broccoli & Cheese Soup with Rivels

Alas, our Christmas snow did not last.  It warmed up and rained like hell.

But then, once the ground was bare, the mercury shot south so fast the thermometers were left writhing in confusion.  Yesterday's high was 50; this morning it was in the low teens with wind chill around zero.

When it's this cold, a couple of things happen.  One:  the competition between dogs, cats, children and parents for real estate around the wood stove starts getting serious.  Two:  I make this soup.

This recipe came about a few years ago when I, in an atypical fit of indecisiveness, could not decide between broccoli cheese, potato, ham and cheese, and ham and potato soup.  The little dumplings, or rivels, are an added touch, a double dose of starch to fortify the body against the bitter chill.  It's a complete meal in a bowl (and a great way to use up leftover ham...).

Potato, Ham, Broccoli & Cheese Soup with Rivels

1/4 cup butter
1 stalk celery, sliced
1 yellow onion, chopped
1 carrot, peeled & diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
4 russet potatoes, peeled and cut to 1/2" dice
4 cups chicken stock
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon thyme leaves
2 tablespoons dried parsley
1 batch rivels (see below)
2 cups diced cooked ham
4 cups milk
1 head broccoli, chopped (or 1 10-oz package frozen chopped broccoli, thawed)
3 cups shredded Cheddar cheese
Salt & pepper

Heat the butter in a large stock pot over medium heat.  Cook and stir celery, onion, carrot, and garlic until the onion is translucent.  Stir in the potatoes, stock, cayenne, thyme and parsley.  Bring to a boil, cover, and reduce heat to low; simmer until the potatoes are tender, about 15 minutes.

Stir the ham and milk into the stock pot and bring to a simmer.  Slowly sprinkle the rivel mixture into the soup, stirring to prevent clumps.  Stir in broccoli and Cheddar cheese.  Cook until the broccoli is tender and the cheese is melted, about 5 minutes.

Season with salt & pepper to taste.

Serves 6.

Rivels:

1 egg
1 cup flour

With a fork, mix the egg and flour together until it resembles grains of rice.

...a white Christmas!

It was a perfect Currier & Ives Christmas, with several inches of new snow falling gently throughout the day, the fire crackling merrily, and far too much food.

Finally something upon which to ski

Weskeag oysters on the half shell

The table, laid for Christmas Eve, and the tree.  And Herman.

A piece of jewelry passes to Thing Two from her great-grandmother

Thing One wanted a jaw harp.  So damaged, that one.

A new apron.  Because every woman's chest should be a navigational aid.

A somber bit of news

Poking around the web this morning I was startled to see a headline on CNN that Joe Bodolai is dead.

Joe Bodolai and I share an alma mater, and I interviewed him for a profile in the alumni magazine some years ago.  I enjoyed the conversation immensely - it was one that stood out among dozens of similar interviews.  Though the subjects included politicians and artists and professionals of no little renown, at this distance they have lumped together in my mind as one big, successful, famous Allegheny College alumnus who changed the world.

But my conversation with Joe was memorable.  He was charming and hilarious, of course.  He seemed like a good man, one with convictions; at that time he had just returned to the States from Canada, where he had moved as a conscientious objector back in the day.  He spoke at length of his wife and sons, whom he clearly adored.  He was modest about his own achievements.  He had an infectious joie de vivre.  Though he surely forgot the conversation as soon as it was over, by the time we hung up the phone I felt as if I'd made a friend.

And my wonderful editor allowed a direct quote which included the phrase "boob jobs" to remain in the finished article.  Certainly a first for that august publication and something of which I am justifiably proud.

My heart goes out to Joe's family.  Though he wrestled demons, he gave the gift of laughter to so many.  The world is dimmer for the loss of this man.

YOU tell him he's not a lap dog.

I'm dreaming of...

I've griped mildly about a couple of early storms, but truth be told, we've had the warmest fall in memory.  Temperatures have been consistently in the 50's.  Just yesterday Thing One and the rest of the Nordic ski team were playing ultimate Frisbee in shorts (that, and running a 5K, is about all they can do without snow.)

But this morning, December 23, we woke up to this:

Fluffy, sparkly snow sifting gently out of the sky.  Two inches on the ground already.  And it might - MIGHT - continue long enough, and stay cold long enough, to give us a white Christmas.

At the very least, the Nordic ski team will not be wearing shorts or playing ultimate Frisbee at practice this morning.

Mental Kitty

This cat is of my mother's is certifiable.

He has to get into everything.

Absolutely.

Everything.

To the point of compulsion.

Nothing phases him.

Seriously.

Would you mess with that?

Spatchcock Turkey Fail and Recipe: Amazing Gravy

First of all, I just want to state unequivocally that I derive profound enjoyment from the word spatchcock.

Spatchcock spatchcock spatchcock.

Second, I would like to report that I have discovered why the methods for spatchcocking a turkey on the interweb talk about a 10-12 pound bird.

My office gives out turkeys every Thanksgiving.  And they are just massive.  The one this year dressed out at 22 pounds.  Spatchcocking a 22-pound specimen is not at all the same as spatchcocking a 10-12 pound one.

The backbone yielded only to a meat cleaver - my heavy kitchen shears could not manage the job.  I did not sever any digits so figured it was going pretty well.

The first realization that this might not be a good idea came when I opened the bird up, and the realization dawned that there is not a roasting pan in the midcoast large enough to accommodate a butterflied 22-pound turkey.  (I never said I was smaht.)

But when it was time to flip it over and break the breastbone, that's when I had to give up.  I'm not a huge person, but even with my full weight applied - you will just have to picture me with both hands balanced on a slippery poultry carcass, elbows locked, feet dangling off the kitchen floor - that breastbone would not crack.

Out came the meat cleaver again.  A turkey is technically not spatchcocked if it's hacked into two pieces, is it?  Can I still say "spatchcock"?

In case you are thinking it's a little weird to recreate Thanksgiving dinner on a random December weekend -  you are thinking it - this is the lead-up to Christmas dinner, see.  We can never decide what to have, so this year I am making all of our favorites the week prior to Christmas.

Yesterday it was turkey with all the gooey self-indulgent trimmings - dressing, green bean casserole, yams with marshmallows, mashed potatoes, and Amazing Gravy (method below).

Later this week it will be ham, potatoes au gratin, and peas with pearl onions.  Christmas Eve we'll have our traditional lobster stew, and Christmas dinner itself will feature a rib roast with horseradish and red wine pan sauces, Yorkshire pudding, creamed onions, oven-roasted potatoes and Brussels sprouts.  Desserts will run the gamut from gingerbread with caramel sauce and whipped cream, to steamed date pudding with whiskey sauce, to cranberry spice cake, to I haven't quite decided between pumpkin cheesecake with bourbon sour cream topping or pecan pie.

The finished product (quarter is included for scale)

So back to my mangled turkey.  It fit rather snugly in my largest roasting pan and stewed in its own copious (about eight cups) juices, which kept the meat deliciously moist and provided the foundation for an amazing gravy.

This method produces an incredibly flavorful gravy, and it's the ultimate in Yankee frugality because one is utilizing things that might otherwise be thrown away.

Amazing Gravy

While your turkey (or chicken) is roasting, toss the wing tips, neck, backbone, giblets and other trimmings into a stock pot, add water to cover, and simmer, covered.

When the bird is done, pour off the pan juices.  Allow the fat to come to the surface, then skim the fat and do not discard - put it in a large skillet or saucepan and turn the flame to medium.

Whisk in an amount of flour roughly equivalent to the volume of fat.  Stir until it becomes thick and bubbly.

Gradually whisk in the de-fatted pan juices and additional stock from the simmering stock pot, if necessary; reduce heat and simmer until heated through and of the desired consistency.

Season with a bit of salt and pepper and serve.

Christmas candies

Clockwise from upper right:

Peanut Butter Squares (from The Baking Sheet, Holiday 2010)

Peppermint Bark from savorysweetlife.com

Needham's from The Food Network

(She runs a $20 million biotech manufacturing operation but she can't quite let go of the over-achieving homemaker alter-ego....)

Things I Have Inherited from my Mother: A Holiday Study in Three Parts

Part 1:  This photograph  of C. Clifton Lufkin (1879 - 1970). 

Uncle Clif built the house my mother lived in and was, at age 17 or so, the subject of this charcoal sketch by his brother, my grandmother's grandfather Will Crie Lufkin.

Part II:  This oak Morris chair which, to put it gently, needs some work.  The manufacturer's label on the back lists patent dates of 1899 and 1900, but mission-style models like this one were made more toward 1910 or so.

I have been hanging on to it because I can't bear to part with family stuff, and this was Uncle Clif's Morris chair which he loved and which my mother kept because she loved it too and always meant to fix it up some day.

Part III:  A small collection of Uncle Clif's clippings which run the gamut from snippets of genealogical information to fragments of correspondence to hand-copied hymn text.  In amongst random bits was this poem:

We have decided to omit the Christmas tree this year;
But we can just as much enjoy the presents and good cheer,
If in our hearts there is content, and on our lips a smile,
As on my Mother's table the Christmas gifts we pile.

There's presents there for Father, and Maude and Eva Jane,
And there's a token of esteem for Frank of Glencove, Maine.
And Clifton comes to get his share, and there's some things for me,
Oh! We should be so happy, as happy as can be.

Poor Mother broke her left arm, eleven weeks ago;
We gave her then a morris chair, and so our cash is low;
But for all that I chance to see upon the table there
Some packages marked with her name, besides the morris chair.

Maude has a smile upon her face as she comes from her work.
She has a present from her boss.  She is a faithful clerk.
Now let us all be thankful for the gifts both large and small,
And wish a Merry Christmas, and happy day to all.

 - W. C. Lufkin

Wow.  The provenance of the Morris chair and so much more.

If my 1910 estimate is correct, Maude, my 37-year-old great-great-grandmother, was apparently putting her commercial college degree to use and working outside the home.  Eva, her daughter, was exactly my son's age.

Clif and Will's mother Sarah, wife of the last of the Zebulons, would have been 51.  Zebulon himself was ten years older and his brother Frank (the one who at the turn of the century was in competition with Will for Maude's affections) about 55.

This chair - this offering to a flinty Matinicus native who probably never before in her life had sat still outside of Sunday services, this gift with its deep cushions and footrest and high arms for elevating tired, wounded extremities, this luxury - it probably cost $10.  That's about $250 or $300 in today's dollars, no small sum for hardscrabble farmers who sold gladiola blooms and kittens to scrape by.

But being cash-strapped didn't stop this family from exchanging at least a few gifts, and it doesn't explain why this family with eighty-some acres of land didn't simply head out to the back 40 and chop down a balsam fir for Christmas that year.

And more questions:  How did Mrs. Z. break her arm that September?  Did she miss her footing on the farmhouse's narrow, steep staircase? Did she trip coming in from the henhouse or stumble under the weight of a load of wet laundry bound for the clothesline?

With Maude out clerking, Sarah's arm broken, and no other women in the house save the teenaged Eva (who must have been in school; she went on to Colby College and a teaching career), who managed the cooking and cleaning and household chores?

Ah, well, some things I'll never know, but what fun to piece together the fragments that I do have.  And what a nice Christmas story goes along now with that old chair.

Christmas by the Sea

And this dispatch, to be filed in the small-town feel-good stuff category:  Every year Camden kicks off the holiday season with a Friday-night street party.

Santa arrives at the town dock by boat.

Main Street lights up and stores stay open late.

Marauding bands of high schoolers sing Christmas carols in four-part harmony.

The Baptists put together not just a living Nativity but a recreation of the whole little town of Bethlehem in the church basement.

There's even a parade (perhaps a dozen emergency vehicles and a handful of floats bearing Cub Scouts and the swim team and the like), followed by a tree-lighting and fireworks over the harbor.

The sidewalks and village greens are mobbed, everyone knows everyone else, and even the atheists are in a good mood.

Does this all sound too Norman Rockwell?  I suppose it is, but once a year it's a worthy exercise to put aside one's cynicism and enjoy the spirit of the season.

Happy holidays, everyone.

Yet another middle school band concert

Yes indeed.

(In case anyone else is keeping track, we have five more after this one.)

An era ended over the summer:  St. Patricia was assumed directly into heaven, leaving behind swirling rumors of retirement.  Her replacement is a dynamic and apparently effective young man; whether he is worthy of canonization remains to be seen. 

However, the fifth-grade band's rendition of "Hot Cross Buns" - one of the six four-measure chestnuts performed in unison by the beginning band students at EVERY fall concert - was certainly credible, the sixth grade woodwinds were actually in tune, and the seventh- and eighth-grade symphonic band tackled some remarkably advanced pieces for so early in the year. 

So perhaps a fast-tracked springtime beatification is in order.  We'll see.

Watch this space.

"Road Trip" knitted hat and scarf set

My noble spouse did about three-quarters of the driving so I could get in a bit of knitting on the way to and from Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving. 

I rarely get around to such things when I'm home, so it was a real treat to have some uninterrupted time with sticks and string.

I had two skeins of Patons Classic Wool in Cognac Heather which worked up to 4 1/2 stitches per inch on #8's.

First I made a simple roll-brim hat (simple being an advantage since we left Tuesday after work so were driving in the dark).

Then, once the hat was completed on Wednesday morning, the rest of the yarn and the rest of the trip went into a nice long scarf.  The beaded rib pattern is from "The Sweater Workshop" by Jacqueline Fee.








Now I'm ready for winter!

Thanksgiving at the farm

Three generations

We're just back from a trek to Himself's family homestead in northwest Pennsylvania.  Two days of driving for two days there, but boy, was it nice to have everyone together.  My dear father-in-law; my mother-in-law, who, though in late stages of Alzheimer's is still home; Himself's older brother and his 17-year-old son; and his older sister, her husband, and their two boys, 15 and 19.

My kids are the youngest of the grandchildren.  Thing Two had to hold her own against all those young men.  Does anyone remember the book "Eight Cousins" by Louisa May Alcott? 

My brother-in-law's boy, the one in the middle, looks so much like my father-in-law did when he was 19 it's startling.






 
My brother-in-law and his son, who live in the old farmhouse, grow pumpkins and squash on the flats of French Creek, behind the barn, and sell them from a cart on the side of the road.

Himself's parents live up the hill from the old place.

The farm has been in the family for several generations. The narrative is remarkably similar to that handed down on my side: poverty, backbreaking and ceaseless labor, a certain grim, joyless faith (substitute Methodist for Baptist).

Story goes that Himself's grandfather dug a ditch, by hand, the length of this field behind the house.  I wonder if he enjoyed the view over the valley while he was at it.

Midcoast Maine and rural northwest Pennsylvania are, culturally speaking, worlds apart.  There's a shared love of the outdoors, but it's the difference between Cabela's and L.L. Bean.  Down there, deer season opens the Monday after Thanksgiving so it's pretty much all everyone was talking about. 

The older boys took Thing One deer spotting and target shooting. 

This almost - almost - made up for the lack of WiFi.

Thing Two enjoyed her first visit to a taxidermist.

Okay, perhaps "enjoyed" is not the best choice of word.

The weather in Pennsylvania was unseasonably mild, while coastal Maine enjoyed a white Thanksgiving.  

Okay, perhaps "enjoyed" is not the best choice of word.

I am thankful for family, for family history, for a sense of time and place;

for the fact that my home decor does not include dead wildlife;

for the insurance which allows my mother-in-law to be cared for at home;

for having reached the point in my life where I can cook a turkey dinner for 12 in someone else's kitchen and not stress out about it;

for the friends we were able to spend time with, including my voice and conducting professors and the Rev. Dr. S., who even though laid up with a broken leg can still cream my kids at poker;

for audio books, which make almost thirty hours in the car go by faster;

and for the unrestrained joy with which our dogs and cats greeted us upon our return. 

Life is good.

High School Musical

Our school district really does the arts in a big way. 

Am I starting to sound like a broken record on that topic?

Not that we don't have a great sports program, but our 660-student high school is sort of the anti-Glee.  Success in music or art or theater is a point of pride, both individually and collectively, and community support is overwhelming. 

(As an aside - forgive me, but since we're low on grandparents this is my forum for bragging about my children - my freshman son has just been invited to join the uber-selective jazz band.  Woot!)

So it stands to reason that the annual fall musical has become something of a creative juggernaut, an all-consuming synthesis of music, art, dance, drama and engineering.  The productions since the new high school, with its state-of-the-art, 826-seat auditorium opened, have included Cats, Honk, Once Upon a Mattress, Beauty and the Beast, and Les Mis. 

This year they tackled Phantom of the Opera.

Full disclosure:  I am not an Andrew Lloyd Webber fan.  I believe his success is due more to savvy marketing and brand management (see:  Brightman, Sarah) than artistic merit.  His compositions, though maddeningly catchy, are simplistic; his characters are one-dimensional.

What's more, the quality of his music is inversely proportional to the demands it places on its singers.  Even a marginally competent singer can make good music, even if it's technically demanding, sound effortless, because a good composer knows what sits well with the voice.  But poorly written music, even in the hands of a gifted performer, sounds challenging because it is gratuitously demanding.  Lloyd Webber is a master of sweeping, dramatic melodies which are truly a bitch to sing.

All of that by way to say that Phantom might not be the best vehicle to showcase teenage singers, even those who are genuinely talented.  The vocal requirements are too muscular (particularly over a pit band) and the ranges too great (an octave and a half per number is fairly standard) for voices which won't be mature for at least another ten years.

However, these guys pulled it off, even enjoyed themselves, so it seemed, and there was clearly talent to spare - the director double-cast six of the the leads so as not to completely exhaust anyone over the run of eight shows, several of which sold out.  So what if Friday night's Phantom was a little pitchy and had to substitute falsetto for pianissimo in the upper register. 

I can't even begin to guess how many people were involved, between the students in the cast and crew, the parents and teachers who volunteered their time to assist with everything from sewing costumes to folding programs, the directors and musicians... the whole town was caught up in it, and the audience's response to Friday's performance was truly gratifying. 

Our school district really does the arts in a big way.

Am I starting to sound like a broken record on that topic?

Remember, remember the fifth of November

Why are other countries' holidays so much cooler than ours? 

I mean, seriously.  We have dead presidents' birthdays and Thanksgiving and Independence Day, which actually is kind of cool in theory, but it celebrates signing a piece of paper, doesn't it.  Woohoo.

The French, on the other hand, mark their own revolution on the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille - how cool is that? 

And the British have Guy Fawkes day, which celebrates the foiling of a plot to blow up Parliament in 1605 and involves burning effigies, for heaven's sake.

Clearly, our national holidays are singularly lacking in coolness.

My friend E happens to a) be British and 2) have a lovely new camp on an itty bitty pond up near Liberty.

Last Saturday being November 5 and not a school night, she and her family threw a very cool bonfire night party.

(I mean the party was cool, not November 5 was cool.)

(I mean, November 5 WAS cool, but not too cool to have a cool bonfire night party.)

(Oh, never mind.)

The kids put together a couple of Guys.

And a bonfire.

And the grownups put together a potluck, complete with sausage rolls, beans and Yorkshire parkin.

And then there were the fireworks.

(Okay, so they were actually marine flares.  Marine flares are way cooler than fireworks.)

Very cool.