Cleaning Spinach

One of the primary reasons that I asked for permission to live in the Stone Cottage was the chance to have my own kitchen. I have been cooking since I lived off campus in college; and it has become a big part of my life. In the past, though, I have always had to scramble to find somewhere to cook. I could use the kitchen in the abbey, but only after the staff had left. Generally, that meant a few hours in the evening. On other occasions, I would cook in the houses of friends, which was always fun, but also a bit limiting. I longed to have access to a kitchen all the time. Now my dream has finally come true and I am taking full advantage of the opportunity.

I love cooking for friends. Having the cottage finally makes it possible for me to entertain and I have recently begun doing that. Earlier this week, I had friends over whom for dinner. The husband has some dietary quirks that make menu planning a challenge. He doesn’t eat meat, which is not an issue. I have plenty of non-meat recipes in my repertoire. However, he also doesn’t eat onions or garlic, which is a major hurdle. After thinking about it for a while, I decided that gnocchi might be a possibility for the first course. I could serve them with a gorgonzola sauce, which would not involve either onions or garlic. I need a gnocchi refresher though.

Two years ago, I downloaded an online course on how to make gnocchi. So, I sat down one night to review the lessons. The first lesson was basic potato gnocchi. After watching the video, I was pretty much decided that this would work. But then, the second lesson came along. It was about how to make spinach and ricotta “gnudi”, a kind of dumpling. Hmmm, I thought. They would allow me to practice what I learned at my recent cheese making class. I could make my own ricotta! That was it. I was going to give the “gnudi” a try. Two nights before the dinner, I made the ricotta. I was amazed at how easy and delicious it was. Now I had to try to find the right spinach. All of the supermarkets in the area had baby spinach for salads, but none had leaf spinach. I was almost ready to switch back to gnocchi when I found the right spinach. I was now ready to begin making my “gnudi”.

Homemade ricotta

When I have company for dinner, I try to do as much in advance as I can. I wasn’t sure that I could make the gnudi much in advance. They just didn’t seem like a product that would keep. I decided to re-watch the video to see if the instructor said anything about this.  While watching, I saw something that I hadn’t really noticed any of the other times. It was where she explained how to clean, or more precisely, de-stem the spinach. I knew about having to wash spinach thoroughly to remove any grit, but I had never seen anyone remove the stems. She folded each leaf in half, with the backside up. She then pinched the leaf together under the stem and pulled upwards, removing the stem and leaving the leaves intact. “Brilliant”, I thought. That was the good news. The bad news was that there didn’t seem to be any way to make the gnudi much in advance. That meant more work on the day of the dinner. It also meant I needed a back-up plan that I could pull off quickly, in case something didn’t work.

Spinach de-stemmed

The next day I found myself at the sink with a pile of spinach. I needed to see if I could replicate what the instructor did. The first few tries were not so successful. But, then, I seemed to get the hang of it and I was de-stemming spinach at a good clip. I thought to myself, “How long have people been cleaning spinach this way?” “Probably for centuries”, I answered myself. Then I thought back to the video. The instructor, Gerri, has a New York (Brooklyn?) accent thick enough to cut with a meat cleaver. She also runs a cooking program in Umbria. “I bet she learned how to do that in Italy.” I thought. I could just see her with some nonna who showed her how to do this. Now, here I was, in the kitchen of my little stone cottage in suburban New Jersey de-stemming spinach in just the same way. I marveled at the persistence of some of these practices. It also made me think about how much the way Americans think about food and how food preparation has changed. But more about that at another time . . .

By the way, in case you were wondering, the gnudi turned out great.

The End of the Christmas Season

My Christmas tree

The rush to undo Christmas has always been something of an issue for me. Maybe it’s because, in contemporary American society, the build up to Christmas now begins at Halloween. I guess by the end of December, people are pretty tired of all the hoopla. I always wondered about this apparent longing for Christmas that makes us want to anticipate its arrival for months. I know that most of us have been conditioned by retail to respond this way, but they didn’t get us on the hook without our cooperation. The Christmas season is an invitation not only to shop, but also for our better selves to come out of hiding. Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” is perhaps the foundational document of this aspect of Christmas today. For people of my generation, television attempted to promote “the true meaning of Christmas” through shows like “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and “A Charlie Brown Christmas”. 

 One of my favorite Christmas albums is “The Bells of Dublin” by the Chieftains. On it, there’s a contemporary song called “The Rebel Jesus” written and performed by Jackson Browne.  A verse in that song captures, I think, what I’m trying to say:

“We guard our world with locks and guns
And we guard our fine possessions
And once a year when Christmas comes
We give to our relations
And perhaps we give a little to the poor
If the generosity should seize us
But if anyone of us should interfere
In the business of why they’re poor
They get the same as the rebel Jesus.”

In the song, there follows a kind of apology for the singer’s cynicism, which, I am afraid, I share. I guess I always want to shout “What about “goodwill” the rest of the year? Instead, it’s back to business as usual. Maybe the pressure to be good is just too much for us.

My creche 

For many years, I often felt the same way. Maybe not for exactly the same reasons though. For most of my life, I simply didn’t get Christmas the way I assumed other people did. I understood the spiritual meaning and savored the opportunity to focus on God’s becoming one of us. I loved (and still do) the liturgy and music of Advent and Christmas. But the holly jolly part always eluded me. It always seemed like forced fun to me. I have always felt a tad guilty about that, too. But that’s why I was always glad to see Christmas go. I could finally escape the expectation to be merry. Let’s just get back to everyday life. I’m much more comfortable there.

Christmas Baking

This year, however, without the responsibilities of work, I have enjoyed Christmas for what seems like the first time since childhood. I spent long hours baking gifts, wrapping presents, decorating my little house, and listening to Christmas music non-stop. I could unplug the timer and light the lights on my little tree during the day, if I felt like it. I had the luxury of focusing all my energy on Christmas. This year Christmas was not just another thing that I “had to” do. I recognize fully, that this is a luxury, a gracious gift that I have been given. I don’t know if this has changed me permanently; but I suspect that it has given me a different perspective on Christmas.  I’ll give you the rest of the lyrics to “The Rebel Jesus” as a way ending.

“But pardon me if I have seemed
To take the tone of judgement
For I've no wish to come between
This day and your enjoyment
In a life of hardship and of earthly toil
There's a need for anything that frees us
So I bid you pleasure and I bid you cheer
From a heathen and a pagan
On the side of the rebel Jesus.”

OK, I’m not a heathen and a pagan, I am a Christian. Still, I can share those sentiments.

The Christmas lights on the cottage

So, this year I am sad to see Christmas go. Yesterday was the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, the liturgical end of the Christmas season for Catholics. I had intended to begin taking down the decorations today, but, instead, I am writing this.

I know that Christmas can’t last forever, but maybe just one more day . . .

Learning to Make Cheese

One of the aspects of being “retired” that I was most excited about was the ability to participate in activities during the day. I have been on the mailing list of a number of venues that offer cooking classes, but I have never attended any. I finally got my chance! A few weeks ago, I received the January program for the Farm Cooking School in Titusville, NJ. Among the interesting offerings was a cheese making class on January 3^rd. The blurb on this class indicated that it is very popular and always sells out. So, I decided to plop my money down. I received a confirmation form on the same day, so I was in.

The Farm Cooking School

The day of the class arrived and I loaded the car and set off. Titusville is near Lambertville, which is a little more than an hour from Morristown. I gave myself an hour and a half because of early morning traffic. Fortunately, weather was not an issue. It was an overcast but dry day. I made good time and there were no issues, but I still arrived at 9:50, just ten minutes before the start. The farm is farther off the main road than I imagined and the local road leading there was posted at 25 mph. At any rate, I arrived, parked the car and went inside.

The instruction space

The space where the instruction takes place is not terribly large and resembles and over-sized country kitchen. The stove is a six-burner. There is a long work counter in front of the stove and that’s where my fellow cheese-makers were standing. I was told to grab an apron, which I did. Then I joined the group. I was the next-to-last to arrive. The chef/instructor, Ian Knauer, did a quick headcount. Just missing one, which brought our number to fifteen. As if on cue, the door opened and are last member arrived. Then the fun began.

Prepping veggies for lunch 

Ian, who previously worked in the test kitchen at Gourmet Magazine, gave us an overview of the class. We would be making four “fresh” cheeses: crème fraiche, ricotta, chevre, and mozzarella. We began with crème fraiche, which was the easiest. It basically just involves adding a starter to cream and letting it sit for forty-eight hours. The interesting thing about this class is that the cheeses we were making were all part of the lunch menu that followed the class. The crème fraiche was going into a dish of lentils and roasted carrots. Our first “hands-on” experience, then, was peeling carrots. Then it was peeling and chopping onions, cleaning mushrooms, and peeling beets and pears. Once the lunch prep was done, we moved on to making ricotta.

Chef Ian ladles the curds

All the cheeses we made involve a few common steps. The most basic step is to heat milk to a desired temperature. This is to eliminate any bacteria and create, as Ian said, “a blank slate”. This cooked milk becomes the building block of the cheese. Then the milk has to be curdled so that you can separate the curds and the whey. As Ian was demonstrating this with the soon-to-be ricotta, he extolled the virtues of whey, which is rich in protein. Since whey is a byproduct of cheese making, he suggested several ways in which we might use it. He also made us all taste it. Not bad. Soon we were ladling molten curds into cheesecloth-lined strainers. One thing became obvious during the class: You need a fair amount of space to make cheese at home.

The most difficult of the cheeses was mozzarella. To make mozzarella, temperature control is more critical than with the other cheeses. It requires an accurate kitchen thermometer, one of which I was lucky enough to receive as a Christmas gift last year. Here the hands-on experience was decisive. Once the curd is ready to be shaped, you have to be able to judge when it is ready to be worked. This involves several immersions in hot water that is ideally around 170º. It is hot, but not unbearably so.  After a few tries, we all got the hang of it. Soon we had a bowl full of mini-mozzarella balls. These were served with some sautéed mushrooms. We had also prepared a beet, kale and chevre salad. 

Some of the dishes

The class was now over. The time just flew by. All the dishes were placed on a buffet table. A quick hand wash and we all took our places at the long communal table. It was all very convivial. A few people had brought wine, which they shared. The food – almost entirely vegetarian- was delicious. Then it was time for dessert – poached pears served with our fresh ricotta. That was a real treat! Absolutely delicious. I will definitely be making ricotta. That was my primary interest in taking this class. This was a morning well-spent.

Cut a little brush every day

The area in question

For some years, I have been eyeing the area at the bottom of the field where the garden is located. It has become completely overgrown with briars and barberry. In addition, a series of storms brought down quite a few large branches into that same area. This has made it the perfect habitat for my nemesis in the garden, the dreaded woodchuck. So, not only is it unsightly, but it has become a haven for one of the worst garden pests. I have been thinking about clearing it for some time, but never had enough opportunity. A few days ago, I began the task. I am starting by removing the briars, which make access to anything else next to impossible. I’ve done some of this work before and I have discovered that the best approach is to be methodical. Find a starting point and then just work your way into the center of the plant. Often it is necessary to remove some of the long stringy branches first in order to be able to reach the base of the stems. Gradually, though, the next area to attack becomes apparent. And so it goes.

A work in progress

On the first day, I worked for about an hour. I may have cleared a total of about eight feet. At the end of the session, I looked at what I had done and was discouraged. Then a voice inside of me said, “Cut a little brush every day.” I realized that, if I wanted to finish this project, the important thing was to stick to it. It wasn’t important how much I got done in one day. It was more important that I be regular in my efforts. That is how I was going to tame this beast. So, my New Year’s resolution began a few days before January 1, 2019. Barring inclement weather, and not on Sundays or Holydays, I was going to cut a little brush every day. I’ve probably done about a forty foot strip on the outside by now. If we don’t get snow, I might be able to finish this stretch by the end of this week. Then I will start on the inner side, which is much worse. I am determined, though, to get this done, while I have the time. I may never have this chance again.

While doing this work, I couldn’t help thinking about the Scriptural references to thorns. Maybe the only thing I remember from my study of Hebrew is the expression “ve-dardar ve-quosh”, meaning ‘thorns and thistles”. The entire text is in Genesis 3 and is part of the curse that God puts on Adam for having eaten of the Tree of Life. “Cursed be the ground because of you! In toil shall you eat its yield all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to you, as you eat of the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face shall you get bread to eat, until you return to the ground, from which you were taken; For you are dirt, and to dirt you shall return.”

For most of human existence, this curse has been a lived reality for the vast majority of people. Until relatively recently, the survival of the race was always precarious. It depended on the ability of farmers to coax enough food from the earth. Pestilence, famine and disease were all too real – and still are, in some places on the planet. Genesis puts this in terms of a curse for our original disobedience to God. If we hadn’t disobeyed, we’d all be living in a well-watered garden where food was produced effortlessly and year round. What were Adam and Eve thinking?  Clearly, the writer of Genesis is at pains to explain why human beings have to struggle to provide enough food to survive. He has just written in the same book about a loving and beneficent God created a wonderful world for his creatures.

As a “gentleman farmer”, I have been repeatedly reminded over the years how easy it is too lose everything. When an unsparing drought or an inordinately wet summer destroys most of my crop, I know I won’t starve. While I may be dejected by seeing my efforts come to naught, I know that there will still be food on the table tomorrow and, in fact, until the next season. The experience of seeing the garden fail has taught me to appreciate the struggles of farmers throughout the world and throughout the centuries. It has also taught me to value every item of produce that I consume. Whenever I am asked to say grace at a public event, I always try to pray for those who produce the food we are about to eat. In the developed parts of the world, it is easy for us to forget that someone ( or often many people) had to produce the food in front of us. They had to get it to us “by the sweat of their brow”. We just have to tuck in and take our antacids later.