Black Rice

Have you seen this? It makes it sound like black, or forbidden rice, is rather a 'must have' than a luxurious oddity. Looking it up to learn how to cook it. Last time I tried it with Karl being my audience it was rather al dente; but still astoundingly different from white or even wild rice. Today's menu: Black rice and stir fry veggies with grilled shrimp and spinach salad - also, some of that famous Viognier. Happy Mothers day, you two.

Love, Isa

PS: Reading the title of this article I take a second look. I have never found any blueberries in any rice. Have you? :-)

Old Customs

Corpus Christi, Appenzell, Canton Appenzell Inner-Rhodes

Corpus Christi is celebrated in Roman Catholic areas on the second Thursday after Whitsunday. It consists of a procession in honour of the holy sacrament. In Appenzell the end of the official procession is taken up by women dressed in traditional feast day costume. This costume is worn only on a few specified religious occasions.

Did I send you this picture? I don't remember pushing all the right buttons. Anyway - double-stitched holds better:-) It is a snapshot from the life Iivo was close to some forty years ago. We lived just some miles away from where this shot was taken.   Happy Mother's Day.   Opa

11.05.2013 © swissworld.org

Saturday

It was "such" a day here,: deep hanging clouds and rain, rain, and again rain. So far, since this started two days ago, we had nearly two inches and the grass on the other side of the windows looks happy, fresh, and green. Panic is lurking: if this rain does not stop pretty soon, the grass is getting out of hand. That means when I finally get to cut it, it leaves mounds of brown, rotting clumps behind the mower in lieu of quickly disappearing short clippings.

Yesterday, while I was shopping for the Pac or Boc or whatever Choi I also stopped at Hannaford and got me a salmon filet - wild caught, Alaska. There were these great family sized filets behind the glass and I stood there thinking what I would do with the leftovers, but he fish monger behind the counter offered to cut whatever I liked, so I wound up with a half pound, skin on filet. Today, being locked in, I did big cooking, I made a big pan of stir fried veggies, using one jar of Brenda's blanches beans, on jar of her blanched carrots, both 2012 harvest vintage, a fresh green pepper and a fresh green yellow squash, both imported from the southern flat lands, and half of a Vidalia onion, carrying the label 'Vidalia', so it must come from Georgia, USA. There is so much left over, I'll eat from that batch for the rest of the week. The salmon  -  I cut the skin off and rubbed it (the filet, not the skin!) with some sesame oil and dusted it with salt and coated it with pepper. In a glass dish, I laid it on a bed of the other half of the onion, sautéed, powdered it with parmesan cheese coated it with sour cream and baked it for five minutes at 450 degrees. A side dish of fresh spinach leaves wit Feta and Catalina completed the 'order'. No wait, there was also a bottle of Las Perdices, 2011 Viognier, Mendoza, Argentinia. A must-try wine if you get a chance. It has just the right amount of acidity to take it away from the sweet, a bit bland white Viogniers that came across my tastebuds in recent months. It is on sale at the Co-op for 9.99 and it is just as good as, but very different from the Gérard Bertrand Viognier from France, which I recommended to you the last time when I was talking about Viognier. That one, they are now selling it for 13 bucks, if they still got any after I took the last bottle from the shelf.

When I say as good as I do not at all mean that the two wines are alike. The French and the Argentinian are in the same direction of taste, or aroma, if you prefer that term or, if you want to get really technical, they have a very similar bouquet, but while the French is a soothing accompaniment to a meal or a conversation, the Argentinian is that charging Dragoon in old time mounted warfare, taking the lead with a yell, swinging his broad sword over his head and riding the enemy down before there is a chance to get up a proper defense. Well, maybe I went a little overboard with this comparison, but it should give you the idea that the French is the accommodating accompaniment and acquiescent supporter, while the Argentinean is the leader.

It is just about 20 minutes after three, but the sky looks like its just before sunset. I better get back to my Las Perdices. They (the last drops in the bottle) are getting warm and I would not think subjecting them to another cooling cycle.

Have a grand afternoon and evening, and a merry Sunday.
Love, Isa

Pac Choi

Friday, May 10, 2013 at 5:39 PM

Went to the big city (BB) today for almost the sole purpose of finding Boc Choy seeds, or Bock Choy, whatever the spelling. Well turns out the spelling is Pac Choi. The Co-op has an organic variety of seeds. Walmart outdoor living has none, the nursery on rt. 9 in BB North has none, but Agway had another , presumably inorganic variety at almost half the price of what the Co-op carried. I am continuously amazed about the price difference of food grown without expensive pesticides and with fertilizers that have no other manufacturing cost than that incurred from feeding animals and rotting plant stuff, vs food that is grown according to modern agricultural science. The Co-op now has a section that says "Regular products". There one can find all kinds of stuff that we are familiar with from our regular visits to the friendly neighborhood supermarket. I got a pack of each of the two seeds at those two places and will make a scientific evaluation of the relative effects of each. Do I feel better after High Mowing or Agway? Stay close so you will not miss the conclusion of the Chinese Greens mystery.

I came home, had something for late lunch, and eventually moseyed out in the garden to prepare the space for the new tenants: Pak Choi, egg plant and Kohlrabi. Can't wait to have a stir fried baby kohlrabi! Can't wait to have some eggplant, pan fried, with sunny side up and bacon and hard crusty bread for breakfast. Of course, I'm also looking forward to the fresh baby Pac Choi. I looked up what the nutrition of this green is and am amazed: 70 grams of it will yield 9 calories! One must run only some four miles to get rid of that again :-) It delivers 1% Carbs, 3% fibre, but estimable amounts of Vit. A, C, Calcium and Iron. So it is not just water, like we used to tell each other snickeringly about cabbage: Might as well drink a glass of water, rather than going through the trouble of cooking a cabbage. Yeah, and in lieu of adding all those spices so one can eat it, you add some hops and some grains to water and it gives it a real good taste!

Chip says the ground is still too cold to plant. Up here, one does not plant before the tenth of June! Al Gore's scheme must have caused a slipping of the dates: when I dug up the fresh garden row this afternoon, the ground was warm to the touch.; deep down, too. I grant you, the worms are still a bit sluggish when they are dug up to the day light, but then I never knew them to be great sprinters. So, I am going to plant right after the water drained off enough after these coming rainy days.

Y'all have a good weekend down y'alls way, hea!
Isa
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Saturday, May 11, 2013 at 5:45 AM

I found this article, which expresses about how I feel about keeping Chinese cabbages straight!

Our neighbors used to plant all sorts of lovely cabbages each year. They also planted a lot of eggplant, which I never much cared for in the vast quantities they would wind up with!  

I tried planting some Chinese cabbage seeds here this year, but they never came up.  I hope you have better success than I did!  

L. 

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Saturday, May 11, 2013 at 2:50 PM

I'm learning Chinese! Pac means green, Boc means white, Choi must mean stem. I made that up and I can just envision the condescending smirk this might get from your resident Chinese linguist. But I got it all straight now and I'm looking forward to the harvest. My hope is that your lack of success simply means that the 'Chois' don't like the southern climate, being of the cabbage family that likes it on the cool side.

We used to plant cabbage in Virginia while the ground was still trying to become unfrozen and never had much success. On the other hand, we'd take cruises into the Piedmont and within just a few miles from home, up toward Blacksburg, we'd run into acres and acres of cabbage fields. And then came Uncle Billy's day and I would get a fifty pound bag of local (VA Piedmont) cabbages from the trade-lot and bring it home to the women who went right to work to make our own sauerkraut. The women, in those days, was the team Helde and Emi. Memories!

My 'Chois'  should get the cool weather here, if I can get the seeds down before it turns seriously warm. It is raining off and on all day and the shreds of the clouds are hanging over the ridge across the valley. Thanks for the lead in clearing the mystery of the "Stems," Laurie!
Opa

Energy

From this month's North Carolina Country (monthly pub. of the NC Electric Coops.):

When using your laptop computer at home, put the battery charger (an AC adapter) on a power strip that can be turned off. The transformer in the charger draws power continuously, even when the laptop is not plugged in.                                                                 Source: Alliance to Save Energy 

Rating Coffee

This morning started almost with a bang. Last night I ended the day reading on my iPad after tugging in - the poor thing is still reduced to such menial duty as holding books for me = and fell asleep. This morning, I woke up felt the Pad next to me and rolled to the other side and almost out of bed, because, perhaps subconsciously avoiding rolling over the Pad in my sleep, I had moved all the way to the edge of the bed. I avoided the fall by swinging my arm out and knocking against the night table and my water glass over and the water was noisily gurgling through the drink-bottle neck and thus I was recalled to consciousness with a rough shake and instantaneous panic.

That was at about 4:30 this morning and there was no chance of ever getting back to sleep.

Iivo advised me yesterday to experiment with my sleep pattern. Says he: sleep when you feel like it and get up and about when you don't feel like sleeping. You have nowhere to go at specific times anyway, so take advantage. Taking advantage, I got up, did the bathroom thing under electric light rather than in the rays of the morning sun and got ready for the day. You know I can't start the day in pajamas, so I was fully dressed, booted and with my spurs strapped to the heels. Now what? at 5:AM with nowhere to go?
I opened the pantry to get Ideas and found old bottles of nutritious things, out-dated by over two years and I began to throw things away. This uncovered new layers of long forgotten things of which many went on their way to good old Clyde Twitchell, and others returned to the shelf, stimulating my culinary inventiveness. Then I came across a box of Country Value Baking mix. On the box cover, it showed nice, fluffy biscuits, and it said that one could use it to make biscuits, waffles, pancakes "or whatever". This stuff could not be old. It must have come to this kitchen at a time when the kids were here and demanded waffles, or pancakes, or whatever. It most probably came last year form the country store down in Jacksonville village, together wit a bottle of Hungry Jack Original Syrup, which would not have been allowed through the door in Tante Lulu's time. So I decided to have biscuits, and bacon, and sunny-side-ups, and sautéed tomato, and by the time I had all that the sun would be up.

I also found a box of Maxwell-house coffee singles. Now those, I remember, come from a time way way back when we were still in MA and visited Lulu on a more regular basis and at one point she had decided to simplify her life and just had gotten into this way of making her coffee. In those days, My opinions still carried some weight and when I uttered some regarding this way of mutilating a good thing, she must have abandoned the rest of the box contents because the box is still there and nearly full. I decided to try it, and this at long last gets me to the subject line: on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being indescribably delicious and 1 being intolerably bad, this coffee rates a 4.75. That is just below the neutral zone of neither good nor bad, but it definitely is not on the good side of the scale. What turned me more vociferously against it in those good old days was my strict adherence to traditional ways and means. Age does mellow a guy. Some traditionalism may still linger about and influence my rating, because in the end I had three cups of it during my long breakfast period and am still breathing normally!
The weather here is slowly turning towards rain. I have windows open on all corners of the house, so I can't go far, because they must be secured should rain really set in. I whiled the time away with running the Jenn-Air oven through its cleaning cycle and that accounts for the real need for all the open windows. I'll be looking for some more outdated things and perhaps go visit Clyde.

You do know about Clyde, don't you. I mentioned him earlier on several occasions. His father used to be "old Mr. Twitchell" who lived in that old farm house way on top of the mountain. His barn burned a few years back and the fire crew used the water from Lulu's pond to try to save some of it. Whether the water was no good, or the barn too old and dry, it burned down to the foundation. At one time, Tiiu and I contemplated talking to Mr. Twitchell to let us use space in the east end of that barn to build us an apartment. The east end was overlooking the valley that we see from our deck here, but from a much higher vantage point; a fabulous view! His son Clyde is the Cerberus installed at the town transfer station. He oversees the comings and droppings of the town people and operates the Trash compactor and punches little holes into your card that you buy from the town clerk and have to show to Clyde to be acknowledged, and admitted to his private Hades. Semi-private, that is, because it is still under superior control of State, County and Village. But Clyde is in charge. I heard that he ran Chip off the lot! Twice!. Chip admits that he likes to egg him on, when he goes there.

By the way, Chip came back with Brenda and his camper from the long weekend up by Sunset Lake, where Brenda went on fifteen mile hikes in search of treasures and Chip spent the time mostly tending the hearth fire. Literally, he says, since they had a fire going in the camp every day, all day. He came over here last evening. I was reading and he knocked on the door with his gin-and-tonic glass in his hand and came to chat. He felt inhibited by my having no drink and never touched his until he left again. But we still had a chat, and by the time we had finished, all problems of getting the garden tractors back to run after their winter rest, and after cleaning all the weeds out of the pond, etc. we were both prepared to shake hands and go our own ways.

And so life slowly bubbles on up here on the mountain.

Have a wonderful day.
Isa

Guete Sunntig mitenand!

Went to the Jacksonville churchlet this morning. Found 20 congregationalists, Doug and Mary Lou absent on their trip through Europe, and Rick Gramlin standing in for Doug. I go to that church and I have to rend my clothes and strew ashes on my head for all the bad words I have about the lack of love of the mountain people for us flatlanders. It was a hearty welcome. Like, they went out of their way to shake hands. It is good to be back!

On the way back to the house I stopped at the mail box and found two letters: first one - renew your Sam's  membership or else. Now that I have the mailing stuff here, I can do that renewal, or have you already done it, Kaarin? Second one - the bill from the Jacksonville Electric $17.32. Its going to go up now. Most mornings during this past week I got out of bed while the sun was still "under covers" and turned lights on freely, all over the main floor. Then, the sun gets up and his (you Britishers do think the sun is a male, don't you?) rays come streaming through the windows and the rooms become so bright that one does not even notice those artificial lights are on and they stay on, often until it gets to be time to turn them off at bed-time. But this bill will never reach the wondrous heights of the one in GB, with the heat pump running to pump the heat out of the house. Also, in GB the rooms are so much in the shade that one needs artificial lights almost everywhere, all the time.

With that wealth of communication from the outside world I strolled over to the garden patch. The weeds are growing around the asparagus roots and need some stern constraints. But there are at least a half dozen stems poking up toward the sunlight, not yet ready for a snack and definitely too small for dinner, but they are poking. I will now wriggle back into my overalls and go water the garden :-)

Guete Sunntig mitenand, all you uninitiated, means "A good sunday to all of you".

With loving thoughts, Isa

If you wish to opt out of receiving these sporadic signs of life from the mountain, you must find a good bottle of wine and come here with enough time to to apply for having your address removed from my list.

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Dear, dear Opa,

Do not think for even one moment that my lack of response at this, the craziest time of the homeschool year--the end-of-classes push at KEYS and the editing push for HEAV--means that I do no absolutely LOVE these "sporadic signs of life from the mountain"!   I DO so love receiving them, and I do fine time--even in the midst of the inanity--to read them, and smile, and ponder and reflect and appreciate and enjoy. Please keep them coming!! :)

Did the saved wifi thing I had work?

L.

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Dear Laurie,

Thanks for the moral support. "Us writers" like to know that we are read and your e-mail came at a very timely moment. Your question about the saved wi-fi thing put me on a search in my files, but the most recent note I have there from you - other than the one from today - is dated February 8, way too early to contain a reference to my call for help out of VT.Could you send it again? My iPad is still balking at getting on this network here, even after my prompt and repeated reaction to all helpful suggestions from others: shut it down for a short time and turn it back on - see if that works. It does not. It suggest the network that it could join and lets me put in no other and then says 'can't join this network'. I have tried many things on Apple support and wild-catter know-it-alls, but nothing and nobody helps here. The last options I have is to call Apple and have one of those two-hour chats, and/or call FairPoint - my ISP, but I really "have not been able to find the time for that" :-)

I have the same jammer with my air printer. It worked fine when I left VT last fall but this time around the printer says "can't find computer' and the computer says 'can't find printer'. Both have the addresses of the other. Of course I excuse it from not finding the iPad - it just is not on. But the computer is doing simply excellently on this network. I took the obvious step and linked the two with the USB wire, but that did not help more than the computer advising me that 'the printer is very low on ink' and when I asked HP to analyze they could find the printer alright but said that the ink levels in all cartridges are just fine. Then they wanted to know if their response to my primary question re "can't find the computer' was helpful. It is to crawl up the walls. Here too, the advise came 'shut it down for 30 seconds and then turn it back on'. Well two evenings ago I turned it off one more time and unplugged it from all connections with anything from computer to power lines and have not looked at it again, waiting for some miracle to happen and it suddenly springs to life.

I also took a trip to North Adams to have my hair cut! No mountain-man looks this year, like I endeavored last summer. It is only 25 miles to there, as it is also to drive to Brattleboro, but in North Adams is the most delightful old barbershop remaining on earth. It is exactly like barbershops used to be some 70 years ago when I was still apprehensive about these strangers approaching me with sharp and pointed scissors. And can you imagine the shakes I would get when they came with that open razor knife they used then, first leisurely honed it on that long leather strop and then laid their hands on my neck . . . This one in North Adams is called Gus's Barber Shop and Gus himself is the only one who barbers in there and he must have come out of apprenticeship when they built his shop in the early years of the last century of the past millennium. He walks not any better than I walk but he does a fine job on hair. I can imagine that all his muscles have done their motions around men's heads so often they can do it now even disconnected from the nerve centers and unaided by the eyes.

Then I went to Big-Y to shop for food and my pantry is now stocked for the next few weeks. I am looking forward to shrimp on wild rice, grilled chicken thighs on penne pasta with tomato sauce, grilled burgers made from grass fed beef and stuff like that, if only I can make time to cook all that. The outside keeps me busy. The veggie patch needs attention. I cut grass yesterday and since we are going to have rain in the next couple of days I will do more cutting very shortly. Time up here is lovely and, I don't know why', I feel better here than there.

Hoping that all is well in VA-B also and that the end of the school year's hecticity will lead into a wonderful vacation period for you. Take a break! Come sniff the clean mountain air.

Love, Opa

Harvest Time!

The latest news from the farm: I just had lunch, sitting on the edge of the garden patch. I had gone there to weed a bit around where the asparagus is supposed to be. There was one (1) ! about 8 inches tall and as big around a Laurie's ring finger. I am very familiar with everybody's fingers. I know you all will now have to take a look at Laurie's ring finger =:-O. But to come back to the harvest: I admired the plant, then reached for it, broke it and ate it. It was so tender and so sweet and full of asparagus flavor and it was hot from the sun and it is not often one gets to eat fresh things THAT fresh. You know where I'll be going every day now!

Just thought you'd like to know :-)

Love, Isa

PS I'm going to have a real lunch now: the last serving from my 'seafood galore pasta' from earlier this week. After that, I'll have to dream up something for my next meal.

Have you ever tried to get into a bib coverall?

Today was my first gardening day. The weeds, green and fresh as well as brown and dry were about two feet tall, so I started with the weed whacker. I hope there was nothing of the asparagus up, yet, but as hard as I looked, I saw none.  Next came raking of the clippings and then the digging. Ah, yes, the digging. This ancient tangle of weed roots is hard to cut through. There is a patch where its a bit easier, which I had turned over last March a year ago, while Ema was also in that garden. - Memories, everywhere.
But I made sure this time I did the not simply turn over the clumps but shook the dirt out and tossed the roots away. Tante Lulu has done wonders with that dirt. I bet one would pay big money for it in a store, packed in a fancy plastic bag.

I did a little bed before I had enough - or rather my back had enough. About a 2x4 -- not inches, you joker.

To prepare for all this, I changed into my bib coveralls that I bought some many years ago down in GB in the Tractor Supply. They are size 42-30 and I must look like one of those scrawny little old hillbillies on postcards you can buy up in the Blue Ridge. they are dressed in bibs, too, but worn ones. What's missing is the slouch hat, the wispy gray beard and the crooked pipe. The thing is way too big for me, now. Nevertheless, there must be a trick to getting into one and to get the shoulder straps straight. I don't know that trick, yet. Looked to me odd that the bib was longer than the back, but, eventually, got the thing on. I felt almost like some of the guys who were woven on the wagon wheel by the holy Fathers of the Church, back in the days of the Inquisition. I was ready to confess and to admit everything, what with my twisted limbs.

When I got untangled and into the garden, of course the pollen took over and I searched for my handkerchief but the pockets were not where they were supposed to be. Then I noticed that the front of the coverall was bulging as a front for a mature size 42 should, but the bulge was much too low. Then I realized that there were hip pockets where they should not be and I finally realized I had wrestled into this unfamiliar garment and had gotten in backwards! I went up to the garage again to change, because there was a little traffic on the road and then one also feels somewhat like on a stage down there in the garden patch framed with the big old timbers and overlooking the whole valley and Bea's old farmhouse and Steve's old barn. No sense in getting people to talk about you in that way "did you see him yesterday in the garden? Oh, you won't believe it, and I heard him say us Vermonters are a bit weird". I moved very nonchalantly back into the barn, where I had much rather done it in a run, but I did not want to draw special attention.

So anyway, I went back into the garden patch properly outfitted and did my work and when my back said "HALT", just about that loud, I straightened out some and, guess what - the two Canada geese had come up from the pond and were grazing next to me just on the other side of the fence along the pasture. Explain that; wild animals that close to mankind. My constant bobbing up and down with my head to the ground and not much moving around must have made them think I was a goose myself, a weird one, grazing in a weed patch! -- "Look there, Jane, he's a big one, let's stick close to him so we can fly in his slip stream when we start up again" . . .

Life up here stirs such different thoughts than life down there.

I wish you all an equally great day,

With loving thoughts in your direction, Isa

I'm having company--all the time

In recent days, there was a deer (doe) on the pasture, then a moose (cow). Beginning of the week two ducks landed on the pond, stayed a couple of days and left northward. Yesterday, two Canada geese splashed down on the water. The were there necking this morning, and then grazed all day on Steve's early grass. They left with the sun this evening, probably to a safe place to spend the night. I don't know if they are traveling alone. Usually, they join their families for the long flight into northern Canada. Maybe they have arranged for a big meeting here? it happened in previous years. Now, in the deep dusk of the evening, there is a tom turkey out there practicing his tail feathers for the season's events. I expect him to bring his brides here pretty soon. There were as many as 21 of them last summer and fall.
It is so wonderful to live in a house that has windows open to nature. And with the rising daytime temperatures, our windows ARE open.

Have a lovely evening y'all, and see you soon? Isa