In Memoriam 2.0

A couple of weeks ago we held a memorial service for my great-Uncle Lew.

A man like that needs more than one memorial service, see; this was his third, after one in Florida where he retired and a second in Tennessee where he had his career.  This one was for the benefit of my grandmother, who can no longer travel, and the Maine family who couldn’t make one of the others.

A bit of background, if I may.  Back in the 1940s, as I’ve mentioned here before, my grandmother went one way and my Uncle Lew went another, theologically speaking.  My grandmother and Uncle Lew loved each other deeply, but the two branches of the family have always regarded each other with some suspicion. 

Uncle Lew’s side exists in good-humored trepidation of the morally superior and judgmental Baptists, while my grandmother’s line compresses its collective lips in grim disapproval of the worldliness and wickedness of the faithless.  This mutual wariness was visited upon the second generation and most of the third, and it accompanied my grandmother, Aunt Gerry, and a couple of dozen uncles, aunts and cousins from around the country into the Thomaston Baptist Church for the memorial service. 

The eulogy was interesting because the minister didn’t actually know my Uncle Lew; but knowing my grandmother, naturally he made assumptions about Lew, and thus expelled bushels of warm air about St. Lew living his life for the glory of God and similar twaddle.  I’m sure it gave my grandmother great comfort but the rest of us had to stifle the urge to laugh out loud and/or bean the ordained one with a well-flung hymnal.

The afterparty, however, was at MY house, which is a twaddle-free zone.   We drank, we swore, we laughed, we played Frisbee (aging uncles and younger cousins together), we grumbled about politicians, we ate too much and drank some more.  The Baptists declined the Frisbee game and the wine, endured the rest because they were outnumbered, and tried not to show they were having a pretty darn good time.

(And since my grandmother went home to rest after the service, there was no need to conceal the wine.)

Uncle Lew would have loved it.

Eating local

CSA and CSF season has started up again.  Somebody say glory!

Although I am not best pleased with how Port Clyde Fresh Catch is evolving the CSF. 

Two years ago, a share was an entire fish (or many fishes if they were small, like sole), and it came in a big plastic bag with a twist tie and you picked it up from the back of a truck at the farmer’s market.  If you ordered your share pre-filleted, you had the option to also receive the “racks,” the carcasses, which make amazing chowder, and if you’ve never chased your young children with a three-foot cod corpse you haven’t lived. 

Then last year, they did away with the rack option and stopped selling at the farmer’s market. 

This year, a share is two pristine vacuum-sealed bags, neatly labeled and bundled in mesh; pickup is at an upscale gourmet market; and each of the bags has exactly one pound of fish in it – not the same kind of fish, though, so if it takes the entire share to feed your family, you wind up with some interesting juxtapositions (monkfish and Atlantic redfish, for example).

The fish is still excellent, but now it feels far removed from the slightly rough-edged boat-to-table model which we loved. 

Anyway, the season has started, so we’re getting back into the mindset of eating what’s ready when it’s ready and not really knowing from week to week what the menu is going to look like.  Great fun.

Last night’s dinner was roasted scallions from Farmer Tom, rice cooker pilaf, and a cod/haddock medley (courtesy of the new, improved CSF) baked with a vegetable and herb topping. 

Feels like summer.

Recipe: Baked Fish with Herbed Vegetable Crumb Topping

Baked fish with herbed veggie crumb topping

1 medium yellow onion

2 stalks celery

1 carrot

1 stick butter

2 tablespoons minced garlic

1 – 1 ½ cups plain dry bread crumbs

½ teaspoon dried thyme

Pinch red pepper flakes

Salt & pepper

2 lbs. fish fillets (cod, pollock, haddock or hake)

¼ cup snipped fresh chives

¼ cup chopped fresh parsley

Preheat oven to 350. 

Trim/peel and finely dice the onion, celery and carrot. 

Melt the butter in a large skillet and sauté the diced vegetables and the garlic until tender.  Add enough breadcrumbs to make a loose mixture (not too dry).  Season with thyme, red pepper, and salt and pepper to taste.

Place fish fillets in glass baking dish and sprinkle the crumb mixture evenly over the top.  Bake uncovered for 20 – 30 minutes, until thickest fillets flake easily.  Sprinkle with chopped fresh chives and parsley and serve.

Recipe: Rice Cooker Pilaf

Definitely not the first or only person to think of this – in fact, I just googled it and got plenty of hits – but I’m posting it anyway because I started doing this a few years ago on my own without any help from the interwebs.

Rice Cooker Pilaf

Measure the desired amount of rice for your rice cooker, subbing orzo for some of the rice, say a 3:1 ratio (approximately) of rice to orzo.

Sautee the rice and orzo (and a chopped onion, if you feel like it) in a bit of oil until the rice is toasted and the orzo is golden brown.  Place the rice mixture in the cooker, add chicken broth to the appropriate fill level, and hit the start button.  Easy peasy.

Lined curtains for a sailboat: A pattern, of sorts

Among the other upgrades to L'Heretique while she was on the hard for the winter, we had her tricked out with new cushions.

The old cushions

Fetching though the 1975 tweed plaid was, the foam was shot.  It was long past time.

And of course the old curtains (navy) didn't match the new upholstery (moss green), which is how I got sucked into a sailboat project.

(Himself spent three years nagging me to make the cushions, so I consider myself lucky for getting off relatively lightly here.  And the new upholstery doesn't match the laminate on the table, so there's another project for him.  Ha.)

His projects

Hers projects

Anyhoo, to the curtains.

Our Sabre 28 has two long windows in the main cabin, each requiring two large panels (roughly 13 1/2" high and 33" wide), and four small windows in the head and v-berth, needing eight small panels (roughly 11" high and 12" wide).

To the finished size add margins for the hem:  2" for the sides (1" each side), 1 1/4" for the bottom hem and a bit more for the top pocket seam - 1 3/4" for the smaller panels and 2 1/2" for the larger.

So we needed four panels cut to 17 1/4" high and 35" wide, and eight panels 15" high by 14" wide.  Three yards plus a fat quarter (which was all the local quilt shop had) and some ingenuity (one of the small panels is pieced together) of fabric was just sufficient.

Newspaper templates are helpful.

As is a drywall T-square for measuring and marking.

It works.  Shut up.

Now, cut a panel of muslin to correspond to each curtain panel - except make the muslin about 2" shorter and 1" narrower than your curtain panel measurements.

For each panel, pin the muslin to the curtain fabric, right sides together.  This will be the bottom of the curtain.

If your fabric has a directional print, this is where you want to confirm what's top and what's bottom.  Ripping out stitches sucks.

.

Stitch a 1/4" seam.

With the wrong side facing up, press the seam toward the curtain fabric...

... then bring the muslin to the top of the curtain panel, folding up 1 1/4" of the curtain fabric.

Press the 1 1/4" fold.

This will be the bottom hem of the panel.

  Now fold each side edge in a quarter of an inch, press...

...fold over 3/4", press again, and pin.

(You will notice up there at the beginning when I gave the finished measurements I said "roughly."  In case anyone is doing math here and about to post a comment pointing out a mistake or three.)

Stitch the side seams.








Almost there.

Fold and press the top seam - 1/4" for the smaller panels, 1/2" for the larger.

 - then fold another 1 1/2" and press again.  Pin.

Stitch along the edge of the fold.  Voila - a rod pocket.








Press one more time to set the stitches.  And that's it!  Hang them and enjoy.

Tostitos the Fish

Like we needed another critter...?  This thing survived the end-of-term 9th grade science project so Thing One got to keep it.

Yay.

Shade for sheep

Those are, indeed, what you think they are.

Beach umbrellas.  In a sheep pasture behind my office.

For shade, apparently.

And yes, in case you were wondering, the person who owns them has named every single one.

Allegheny College Choir Reunion 2012

Senior Recital, 1994

Every three years, my college's regularly scheduled reunion bash includes a gathering of choir alums.

The school's choral program has its roots in the St. Olaf tradition and there have been only three directors since its inception in the 1920s, the third being my teacher, Ward Jamison.

To say that we choir kids are passionate would be an understatement.  Any given reunion year draws 150, 200 singers from the graduating classes of 1940s to present.

But this year was special, because Ward and his wife Vicki, my voice teacher, are retiring after 31 years.  This year more than 300 of us came back.  The auditorium stage had to be built out to hold everyone.

Rehearsals ran from Thursday night through Saturday morning, with the concert on Saturday afternoon.

2012

And then Ward passed the baton.

How bittersweet.  Many tears, but also a celebration of my mentors' careers and a joyful welcome for his successor, my friend James who graduated a few years after me and has gone on to get a doctorate and teach at the college level and generally make his parents proud.  James is married to the lovely Carol (also an alum, and a soprano like Vicki) who will be joining the faculty as a voice teacher (like Vicki).

The end of an era, but the beginning of a new one.

The next choir reunion, in 2015, will coincide with the college's bicentennial.

James is already planning the program.