Category: Family

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Chasing Deer and Surgeons

I didn’t want the dream to end. I was in Europe staring at pastries behind a glass window. However, each pastry, unlike the scrumptious eclairs shown below, was placed apart from each other (a good six inches I would guess) with a number in front of it.

I gathered one had to order the desired pastry by number only and then sit down in chairs that were lined up as if one were in the waiting room of a doctor’s office rather than a beautiful cafe. Was this a pandemic-related dream? The six inches (or six feet in real life) seemed plausible. And sitting in a doctor’s office (or at least wanting to) nibbling a sweet treat seemed to be entirely credible given the last eight weeks.

Lynn had hernia surgery in the beginning of May. It was supposed to be a routine outpatient procedure with little post-op complications. Except no one could be there with him. He would have to be dropped off at the hospital and I would have to wait for a phone call from the surgeon. What’s this have to do with deer you ask? (Note the title of this essay.) Nothing, except that up until this weekend, they were always pretty well behaved on our property.

Lynn had delayed having the surgery because he wasn’t in any pain. Plus, once we had started the ball rolling on this semi-elective “event,” we were told the procedure had to be postponed until a surgeon was available and everyone was vaccinated! We were okay with that. After all we have known each other a very long time (42 years actually) and agree on the important stuff. Besides, we love just being by ourselves. We also love cooking and growing our own food. We did hope, however, that the hernia (derived from the Latin word “rupture”) wouldn’t do just that before the operation was scheduled.  

He was not good with anesthesia, albeit the last surgery he had was 28 years ago.  He had been running through Penn Station trying to catch a Long Island Railroad train to get home to me. But he slipped, missed a step on the stairs to the platform, and fractured his ankle.  Did he miss me that much to justify sprinting for the train?  Perhaps.  But in actuality, I was on bed rest for a pregnancy that could go bad at any given moment. He wanted to get home as soon as he could for both of us; everyone was on edge.

So, he, going into this new surgery, which had been delayed because of COVID, made us uneasy.  Could I tell him I was more scared than nervous?

He wouldn’t wear a coat on the day of the procedure. “More stuff to carry,” he said.  “Wear casual clothes” they told him.  After being home since March 2020 what else was there to wear except sweatpants and a t-shirt?   

“At least take a phone charger,” I said to him.

“No,” he countered.

I dropped him off at the hospital early (6:45 AM) but as mentioned, couldn’t go inside.  He went in on his own and it reminded me of the first day we sent our son to preschool many years ago. Neither of them ever looked back at me or even waved.  

I drove home and stared out our kitchen window.  We have a lot of property and woods so I waited for our “resident” deer to come down the hill to give me a sign that everything would be okay.  But they just walked right up to their usual spot – eating the grass and a dandelion or two for good measure. Thinking back on them now, I’m quite happy with their restraint.

They say most couples don’t talk about sex, death and money.  Pretty funny since we talk about all three of those “taboo” topics frequently – sex and money more than death. Should death be at the top of my list to think about today, though?

I tried to read but since we had been up most of the night worrying about the outcome, my eyes refused to focus.  I walked the rooms in our very large house and felt the quiet.  Was I prepared for him not to return?  I wasn’t.  But knew instantly how it would feel if he didn’t come home. I summoned up an old metaphor thinking that the “silence was deafening.”  I wanted to shout, “Yes, it is!”

I busied myself, texting our children, not revealing my fear.  And then the doctor called. “He did okay,” he said.  “Sorry there was a delay.” Turns out, this surgeon had not one but a few emergencies to deal with that Monday morning.  I compared it to waiting on the tarmac at JFK.  One is anxious for the flight to be airborne, for the trip or vacation to commence. Or, in this case, for the operation to be successfully completed and most importantly, for the patient to have a “smooth landing.”

I’m not religious and I don’t pray but I did look at the “bamboo” on our property which a local chef told me was actually Japanese knotweed. Their sturdy brown and green stalks were pushing through the soil up towards the sky. The chef told me that “their tender shoots are edible.”  Suddenly, I, too, felt I was living up to a particular word that the New York Times had written about in describing certain feelings one has encountered in the past year. The word is “languishing,” which made me think; instead of my current state of inactivity, perhaps I should be outside chopping up some stalks and then brewing them into some sort of medicinal beverage to help him recover?

Finally, 12 hours later, I drove back to the hospital to pick him up.  He was wheeled out in a wheelchair and looked even grayer than the t-shirt he was wearing.  I helped him into the car and reached over to fasten his seat belt. I realized it was exactly the same way I used to buckle in our children when they were young. 

“My phone is almost dead,” he said.

I didn’t want to say, “I told you so,” followed by “why didn’t you take the charger?”

Since then, he has been recovering slowly. No pain, but swelling was the primary culprit. He, who has always been the “lifter” of things in our relationship – whether it be bags of topsoil for our never ending gardening adventures or more and more lumber and moulding for house repairs – suddenly stopped lifting.

I would “grow” muscles I thought! I’d wheel out trash cans, carry out recycling bins, lawn furniture and even table saws! (Yes, we do in fact, have multiple saws.) Luckily, the deer decided not to invade our garden until he had healed sufficiently enough to help me try and remedy the problem.

If you recall my last post, I wrote fondly of the new fence we were planning to install because our old one was not only falling apart, but it was rusting and ugly. What we didn’t take into account when putting up our nicer, albeit shorter fence, was that deer can jump quite high to feast on whatever they think is tasty in your average vegetable garden.

We have lived in the Red House for 11 years and this is the first time we had deer be so bold. Around 8:45 on Friday night, we were alerted by a neighbor that a deer was in our garden. It was too dark by then to see what was consumed but in the morning we assessed the damage. Most of the tomato plants were gone, broccoli and Swiss chard, too. A rose bush that our daughter gave us a few years ago (and had a plethora of red roses blooming) was eaten down to the bottom. Ditto for the daylilies and the Stella d’Oro’s.

The lettuce was left mostly intact as were our peas and beans and anything that was squash-related. To say we were furious is an understatement. We decided we had to make our “pretty” fence ugly again by making it higher.

This is the fence that the deer could easily jump over.

And here’s the deer walking around the back of our driveway “pretending” she doesn’t see all the goodness growing inside the garden gate!

But first I went back to the farm down the road in hopes that there would be some vegetables to purchase. I was in luck when not only were there vegetables left but now everything was half price! So for $24, I managed to get new tomato plants, more broccoli, lettuce and Swiss chard. And I bought some Hungarian wax peppers to plant, too. And since I was not particularly confident we would pull off recreating the wheel (I mean fence), I bought some tomato plants that just needed to be replanted into bigger containers that I could grow on the deck.

When I got home, we hauled out the old fence we had unceremoniously rolled up, tying the rolls closed with duct tape. We thought maybe we could just unroll all the old stuff and attach it to the new fence. Our goal was to achieve some height. I mean, really, how high can a deer jump? According to at least four videos we watched, apparently six feet is the magic number. So, we had to make sure the “new” but soon-to-be-ugly fence was higher than that.

And then there was soap. In the past, we, too, had wasted money on bottles of deer “repellent,” dried blood in various forms, and other useless products we were sucked into buying.

Anything that has a powerful “scent” we were told would also aid in keeping them away. So after the greenhouse, I stopped at the supermarket and bought three bars of Irish Spring. Lynn cut them into thirds, drilled a hole in them, and hung them around the “key” areas of the garden.

At this point, for the first time ever, I really started to rethink the garden. After all, we support many local farmers in the area and there are numerous Amish farms within a five minute drive of our house. Couldn’t we just buy ALL our produce from them this summer? There is, however, a certain satisfaction to growing your own food and making something that’s edible and healthy. Plus, what would I write about and photograph if I didn’t have that one perfect tomato or zucchini or celery to brag about?

This, unfortunately, is how we had to add height. Attaching the old fence to the top of the new fence with some wire.

And then we realized we didn’t have enough “old” fence to finish the project. Why that is I don’t know since the dimensions of the new fence and the old fence were basically the same. Which is why at 5 p.m. we got in the car and made the trip to the big box store to look at our fencing options. This item, like lumber, had gone up in price as well. $72 later we headed home with a roll of fencing and finished the job nearly eight hours after we had started it.

My arms were scratched (and bleeding) from constantly hitting a thorny raspberry bush that I kept bumping into as we tried to unwrap the new fence. Why the deer don’t eat these berries is a mystery but they don’t. One of my legs was also dripping with blood since the sharp end of the fence roll kept hitting my leg as Lynn kept trying to measure (and cut) each section we needed. Besides all this, we were also hot, tired and sunburned.

When we were done that evening and I went back into the kitchen, I remembered when he finally came home from surgery that day. He hadn’t eaten in over 24 hours and was hungry! I had planned ahead. There was bread from the bakery, chicken cutlets, salad, even a Guinness-spiked pot roast! He wanted something “simple” so I quickly made him our “jet lag” dish – a ham and cheese omelet with fresh chives from our garden.

“Drink some water,” I implored him as I, myself, sipped a glass of wine, sorry he couldn’t join me.

I started to clean up the kitchen and begged him to sit down but he just wanted to stand and watch me. Apparently, when he was coming out of the anesthesia, he thought the attending female nurse was me and started to stroke her hair. I laughed and was humbled by that innocent, affectionate gesture. And then right before we turned the kitchen lights off, he looked at the stove and said, “you put the burners on the wrong way.”

And that’s why as long as I’m living in the Red House, I will never give up my garden. Even if everything I’m eating tastes a little bit like Irish Spring.

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A Mohawk Valley Spring: A New Fence Project

Normally by this time of the year we would be planning a summer vacation and perhaps even a fall trip. However, since we, like the rest of the world, have been sheltering in place and avoiding people like the plague – oh wait, COVID is very much like a plague, our planning sessions are only in our “Dreams.”

While I do like the Irish band, The Cranberries, who perform that song so beautifully, we are extremely fortunate to have very green fields behind our Red House. This, luckily, reminds me of Ireland without having to travel there.

However, as everyone knows, being an “armchair traveler” as well as watching as many travel shows as possible (including StanleyTucci’s show “Searching for Italy” which nearly had me weeping), still doesn’t fill the void of not being able to travel. I miss the thrill of getting on a plane or in a car and having a new adventure. I miss seeing new buildings, visiting museums and above all trying different food!

I have overcompensated for this lack of travel by cooking and baking. Homemade gravlax with some chopped red onions, dill and capers? Yes, please! How about a Yukon Gold potato and goat cheese tart in a puff pastry crust? Absolutely!

I spent most of March promoting my new book, Get In The Car: A Food and Travel Memoir. This entailed pouring through old CD’s, revisiting photo albums and searching through my iCloud account for photographs I could use to advertise the book. The challenge was to find the one or two photographs that would accurately portray what the book was about. More often than not, I simply couldn’t decide which photograph to use so would post a few of the ones I thought worked best on social media.

Besides photographs, we also have a lot of great posters that Lynn and I have collected on our many travels. Promoting the chapter about Vienna, all I needed was to take a photograph of the detailed drawing of the “Post Sparkasse” that is hanging in my dining room. And if you are thinking about Paris, so am I. And London and Venice, too! (You know it’s gotten pretty bad when “House Hunters International” becomes your favorite show to watch on TV. )

By the way, all of these photographs were shot by me. I find looking at photographs (and being a decent photographer) helps me when I’m writing. Not only can I visualize the scene I want to put my characters in, but it helps them interact and “talk” to each other. I’m particularly fond of the night shot I managed to capture of the Eiffel Tower on one of our trips to Paris.

If you look at it closely though, the area seems pretty desolate. Lynn and I had just finished dinner and were attracted by the lights of the Tower so we walked towards it. We ended up in a neighborhood we weren’t that familiar with and since two out of the three times we’ve been to Paris there has been a bombing (1986 and 2017 but not 2003), we quickly walked away. Since Paris is still in “lockdown” until the end of the month, I can only assume that these days much of Paris looks like the scene above.

But gearing up for spring, attention must be paid to the garden and specifically the fence. Back in 2010, we put up what we thought would be a temporary enclosure with the assistance of my father. He claimed since he was a “helper” and most importantly, definitely not the “handy type,” that surely the garden fence should have been on the “National Register of Historic Places.” I actually thought that was pretty funny!

Not so funny though is 11 years later, how truly awful the fence looks. Constructed originally just to keep the deer and the rabbits from eating our vegetables and flowers, I’m amazed it actually didn’t fall down (in spite of Dad’s help) because of our very cold and snowy winters.

Here’s what this “beauty” looks like today- rusted gate hinges and all.

Hiring someone to install a new fence wasn’t even a conversation Lynn and I had. We thought we’d order some of that “no dig” fencing, get a really strong rubber mallet, pound it into the ground and hope it would work. We also hoped it would last as long, if not longer, than the first one.

Of course we gave ourselves a “deadline” to do this project. We have about four weeks or so not only to get the garden into shape (weeding, pruning, raking, etc.), but also get all the vegetables and herbs I had purchased from a CSA farm share I bought in January planted.

To take my mind off all this work and to try out a new kitchen “toy” I had purchased earlier in the year (but never used), I decided to take my dehydrator out for a “test run.” This came about because I love chives, especially dried ones. I found myself getting angrier and angrier every time I had to shell out $5 (or more) on a small bottle of chives just so that I could have scrambled eggs with chives! It must be a European thing, I know, but it just makes a potentially shitty day so much better if you at least have the illusion of a “fancy” breakfast in the morning.

These gorgeous goldenrod-colored eggs are from one of my favorite farmers – Jones Family Farm. We’ve known Peter and Suzie Jones since we bought the house and I’m so honored to be able to not only purchase healthy food from them but am humbled by their back-breaking work.

But first, the barrel that the chives had been growing in for probably 20 years before we got here finally collapsed and we had to get a new one. After much heavy lifting, more splinters in our hands that we care to mention, plus the fact that the new bucket had a “Jack Daniel’s” sticker stapled on the side, should have given me a hint. Yes, the wood did in fact smell like whiskey! Would my chives become whiskey-laced, too? (The answer to that is no.)

I thought for sure when we replanted the chives into their new “home” that they would rebel. Would they “kick the bucket” by dying? (They didn’t, they cooperated.) Which is why even a mere two weeks after lifting up the entire chive “hedge” (really it was so heavy it looked like it was a small hedge) and dumping it into its new Jack Daniel’s “digs,” it began to grow profusely.

So a few days ago I decided to read the manual for the dehydrator not realizing that I would need between six to ten hours to “dry” said chives before they could be properly stored. (Don’t you just hate when you read a recipe and realize whatever you are thinking of making is going to take you 2-3 days?) I actually didn’t think it would work. And now I also know why dried herbs cost so much! The drying time alone has got to be a money loser. Here’s my new toy and the progression of the drying process. As you can see, two large racks in the dehydrator yielded less than half of a small glass jar when all was said and done.

I will definitely cut the chives smaller next time and experiment a bit with drying other herbs, too. But since I have an abundance of chives and time, I relish not having to spend money on herbs I can dry myself.

Meanwhile, it’s been raining so our fence installation project is on hold. I did manage to rake up some dead grass and leaves as well as the remains of last year’s various vegetables. And I am very happy to see the tulips that I planted in a variety of colors are blooming!

I needed a lunch break after all this activity and when I looked outside, who did I see but Mr. Bunny! I’m actually not sure if he is a boy or girl bunny but I like to call “it” Mister just for fun. And where is he sitting? Right in front of the fence gate we are about to remove and replace. I will mention that Mr. Bunny seems to be a lot fatter than he was last year. And his little nose was pointing in the direction of the part of the garden he particularly likes to try and get into – where lots of good things to eat like lettuce and broccoli and sometimes, carrots, too, will be planted.

I tried to photograph him but he is very quick to run away. And like many rabbits you see in illustrated children’s books, he has the most adorable white bottom! And most importantly, he has a tremendous hop! Speaking of children’s books, I started perusing my bookshelves for something new to read. (I have also started to compare my “volumes” with all the talking heads I see nightly on TV but tune out to what they are saying just to see what books they have behind them on their shelves.) I picked up an old copy of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s book The First Four Years and truthfully, even though I was an advanced reader at a young age, I wondered how I got through it.

“For it was June, the roses were in bloom over the prairie lands, and lovers were abroad in the still, sweet evenings which were so quiet after the winds had hushed at sunset.” Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote.

Reading this sentence now, I can see the roses blooming across the prairie and appreciate the winds lessening at sunset, but did I at the age of ten? (The book though written in the late 1940’s wasn’t published until 1971.)

On that note, it would be lovely to be “abroad” – using the word as in visiting a foreign country rather than in the context of lovers walking over a wide area. Hopefully, at least by the end of this year we will be able to at least “hop away” for a while so that we, like “Mr. Bunny,” can see some different pastures.

Until our next “Let’s Go” adventure.

My new book Get In The Car: A Food and Travel Memoir is available on Amazon.

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Get In The Car

My new book, available on Amazon (2/2021) in both paperback and Kindle version, is a food and travel memoir. Written in 2008 (and just published this year), it’s the story of traveling with my husband, Lynn and two children. Canada, California and numerous European countries are some of the places we visit. Join us for the ride.

Here’s the link: https://www.amazon.com/GET-CAR-Food-Travel-Memoir/dp/B08WZFTWDM/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=julie+mccoy+get+in+the+car&qid=1614963641&sr=8-2#reader_B08WZFTWDM

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A Very Long Year

I often find myself standing in front of the fridge looking at all the magnets I’ve collected on our travels. Sometimes a memory or two comes back from a city we’ve visited, a noteworthy museum or historic house we were lucky enough to see, or a certain dish at a restaurant that was really good. But the moment is fleeting and once I open the fridge, it’s all about business – planning breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The Fridge Door = A Memory Magnet Wall

As my past few blogs this year have revealed, there’s been a lot of cooking and a lot of eating. Lynn has learned how to make soup and pasta and perfected his pizza making. I baked more than I like to and what we didn’t eat, we froze. I finally got around to looking at old cookbooks that had been sitting on my bookshelves for years. And I read new cookbooks as if they were novels. I devoured each page as if it were a dish itself since my days were based on finding “activities” (i.e., making meals) that would not only pass the time but nourish us as well.

All Kinds of Goodies

Memorable Oyster Moments

I discovered my local supermarket carried freshly shucked oysters from Maryland swimming in their natural brine and bought myself a cast iron pan that I hope to eventually use outside on the grill (where it belongs) instead of in the oven. Taking inspiration from Sarah Leah Chase’s recipe in her New England Open House Cookbook, I learned how to put together a decent version of “Oysters Clark Rockefeller.” I made my own creamed spinach (using frozen spinach and half & half) and it came together beautifully with the addition of some grated Jarlsberg on top. Even as I was making this dish, however, I couldn’t help but remember one New Year’s at Leon’s Fine Poultry and Oyster Shop in Charleston, South Carolina. We spent a sunny afternoon there sitting at the bar and eating platters of coal-grilled oysters while sipping Spanish Cava!

It’s About Time For A Hike

In between all the cooking (and eating), we walked as much as we could before the cold weather and the snow started. We found trails in nearby marshes, walked around a few lakes, and into a lot of forests.

There were waterfalls to visit that were close to home and picturesque covered bridges to cross. All of this made me very happy that if we had to “quarantine” any where in the world this is a pretty nice place to do so.

Crackers and Butter, Why Not?

And then I made crackers. It seemed an okay recipe at the time but the dough was a bit dry and even though they came out fine in the end, the sesame seeds didn’t properly adhere to the dough. Guess what, we ate them anyway!

Then I heard about a shop that was making their own butter. I began to follow them on social media and subsequently paid them a visit even though it was a 45-minute drive away. While I thought the concept was unique, I was disappointed with their product. Consequently, a few days later I just whipped up a batch of my own “compounded” butter flavored with pink Himalayan sea salt. Full confession: I over salted my first batch but have containers of heavy cream sitting in the fridge waiting to be whipped into butter again.

Supporting Local Farms and Stocking Up!

Since March 2020, I have tried to support as many local farms and small businesses as possible. When the weather was warmer and we could have lunch outside at a restaurant, we did. Suddenly though, restaurants started closing. Either they weren’t making enough in takeout orders to keep their establishment solvent or unfortunately, they were forced to shut down because one of their employees had tested positive.

One afternoon we were craving a hamburger from a place we had been to before. I called to phone in an order only to listen to a recorded message that said their restaurant was closed “indefinitely.” So, we went home and for dinner that night I made the hamburger and tempura-fried onion rings we both wanted. (No, the burger wasn’t really this tall; I just wanted a dramatic photograph so stacked everything really quickly and hoped it wouldn’t topple over!)

As the weather got colder, we visited many local farms although Lynn gave a thumbs down to buying a pumpkin. Why? Because last year’s was torn to shreds by either a deer or squirrel or both so we bought tons of squash and apples instead.

I also bought a small freezer to stock up on butter and chicken and meat fearing we would face another round of food shortages going into the holiday season. We had absolutely no place to put an extra freezer in our house so it ended up going in the laundry room which works just fine for us.

Golf? Leaf Peeping? Day Trips?

We even bought some old golf clubs hoping to hit a driving range before it closed for the season even though we never did quite make it there. And we drove, sometimes hours, just to look at the leaves changing colors in a state park.

We visited places we had never been (Hamilton College Zen Gardens below). And went to see as many lakes in the Adirondack Park as we could. (And that’s beautiful Bog River Falls at the bottom of Tupper Lake.)

Picnics!

We often brought lunch with us after buying a really cool thermos that we filled with homemade chicken soup. To kick things up a notch, I also tossed in some store-bought tortellini at the last moment which resulted in a pretty decent version of “Tortellini en Brodo.” Lynn was so pleased that I had even packed a tablecloth on one such outing. He probably thought I was trying to be “romantic.” Actually, I was just trying to cover up any bird poop that might be splattered across the picnic table we were eating on.

Suddenly, Winter

And then it snowed. So we shoveled the snow off the deck and hauled the snowblower out of the garage. We just hoped it would start quickly so we could dig out our driveway!

The local kids started to sled down the hill next to our house and every day we would find another pair of discarded gloves or a hat thrown on our lawn.

The cold weather kept us indoors so I made stuffed cabbage and pulled out the sous vide machine to make chicken. I even ate cauliflower even though it has always been my least favorite vegetable. Hint: tossed with pancetta or bacon, some sliced olives, garlic, parsley and Parmesan it actually becomes edible!

TV Time

We started to watch cooking shows in the early evenings (before the grim newscasts about the number of COVID-19 deaths that day) just to get some ideas about different dishes we could make. This resulted in fish baked in parchment on a bed of slow roasted tomatoes with herbs and white beans. Oh and wine, you need lots and lots of white wine for this dish!

I also finally gave in and bought myself a non-stick frying pan just so that I could learn to make a “real” French herb-infused omelette the way I saw Jacques Pépin do on PBS! (It takes a lot longer to make an omelette this way, but I absolutely love the way it just slides out of the pan.)

I even made biscuits!

Then There Was The Meat Slicer

Yes, truly. I grew up in Munich, Germany, where cold cuts are “king” or at least “König-like” so I was comfortable with this new toy. I also wanted to wean Lynn off of unhealthy processed meat lunches and make my own ‘”healthier” protein for him to eat. After this purchase, we started roasting boneless pork roasts, center cuts of beef and huge chicken breasts. Sandwiches were topped with slices of unfortunately tasteless out-of-season tomatoes but spruced up a bit by a homemade mayo and horseradish spread. Salads were lavishly adorned with slices of chicken and ham was cut to order for leisurely and late breakfasts.

And We Talk and Talk (Childhood Stuff Is Frequently Mentioned)

Lynn and I have been fortunate enough to spend a lot of time together, now even more so. Luckily, we rarely run out of topics. We find ourselves remembering things that happened to us growing up. Lynn likes to tell me his “baked good” story even though I’ve heard it a thousand times before. Apparently when he was a young lad, a friend would entice him to go to a local shop to buy a “baked good.” Even though Lynn wasn’t quite sure what a “baked good” was, he went along for the adventure. (If you, too, aren’t quite sure what a “baked good” is, it’s simply something that was baked, i.e., a cookie, cake or cinnamon roll.) I decided to share with him a food memory from one of my many “summers in Whiting” stories.

Similar to his quest for a “baked good,” my summers in Whiting, Indiana, often involved a trip to a local supermarket with my maternal grandfather. There he would pick up some Hostess cupcakes and I learned from him the proper cupcake eating etiquette. One had to gently nibble first on the waxy chocolate frosting with the decorative white squiggle on top before digging into the cake portion beneath it.

Of course I overcompensate with all this nostalgic memory stuff by making French toast for breakfast one morning using leftover brioche and topped with some raspberries and local maple syrup. And for lunch? Well, I find a recipe I’ve been wanting to make for an Austrian apple cake and decide why make just one cake when you can make two? (We are not total gluttons, we eat one for lunch and freeze the other.)

These days we try to be upbeat but do worry about our adult children, my parents and other family members. To get out of the house we often visit a local farm. There we buy cheese, chicken livers if available, as well as lamb and veal. We freeze everything for future meals and on the way out, we take pictures of Jones Family Farm goats.

Embracing The Gray and the Holidays, Too

We spend Thanksgiving by ourselves, having decided as a family that it was too dangerous to get together now that we couldn’t totally socially distance or be outdoors. Since there was no need to make a turkey for the two of us (we had homemade lasagna instead), I suddenly had an entire afternoon on Thanksgiving Day with absolutely nothing to do! What did I do to pass the time? I decided to cut my hair!

As a woman of a certain age, I have embraced my gray hair and even more so since it’s actually turning a funky shade of silver! And since a visit to the hairdresser as well as a nail salon are big no-no’s for me, I just snipped off about two inches myself. Here’s the new me right after we put up our Christmas tree.

We celebrated Christmas alone as well which meant it was the first time we had spent a holiday without either of our children. We “make do” by eating platters of deviled eggs topped with salmon roe and some fresh dill. And the pâté? Well, that was tucked into little “nests” that I had crafted from the leftover sesame cracker dough.

See that mother-of-pearl caviar spoon? I was lucky enough to purchase it at a restaurant in Paris one year after a very delicious lunch. Sigh, I do miss our European adventures!

And Last But Not Least, Our Final Bathroom

Since we are home indefinitely, we also decided to tackle another (and hopefully last) big home repair project. Normally, this would not have been an article I would have covered here, but since we are not traveling or dining out, I think the “Let’s Go!” blog can make an exception to my own rule.

For those of you not familiar with my previous blog “The Red House Project,” I wrote about the renovation of our house for nearly nine years. Here’s the link to the story that describes how I tackled this very ugly bathroom by myself one summer. http://theredhouseproject.eathappy.net/the-beginning-of-the-red-house/learning-how-to-play-with-boy-toys/ .

We had put off renovating this final bathroom for reasons we can’t even remember. When the kids and their spouses/partners come to visit, it becomes “their” bathroom. It was functional but old and dated. It was time.

So, we went to the “Big Box” store one more time, bought some tile and a new vanity and toilet that will be installed by some subcontractors. When we approached one subcontractor about also updating our bath/shower combo and asked him for an estimate, he responded with a number that was astronomically high. (His fee for this small bathroom redo was about the price of a used car!) Obviously we said no and started to plan to demolish and renovate the bathroom ourselves. After a few false starts and a couple of returns (vanity faucets to be precise), we tallied up the receipts and have spent a little under $300!

The fake marble paneling on the walls came down, and after much trial-and-error we managed to remove the bathtub faucets, too. Hint: white wine vinegar and a special $9 tool! What to see the “Pro Puller?”

To this day I still marvel at Lynn’s drawings and am really truly thankful he can do most of this renovation with a little help from me. This approach also saves us a ton of money!

In the meantime since I’m a trooper, I’m outside in the freezing cold helping him saw pieces of wood so we can build a wall.

Which we did!

Eventually the old drywall will come down around the tub but we needed to put up the wall before the new floor is laid.

Would I rather be traveling and eating oysters at a bar somewhere rather than renovating a bathroom? You betcha! Do I need a few more magnets to add to the “memory wall” on the fridge? Absolutely! As a matter of fact, I hope in the years to come that we can add more than a few to our collection.

Here’s to a happy, peaceful, and most of all healthy New Year everyone.

Until our next “Let’s Go” adventure.

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Shopping, Canning and “Hiking” As We Know It

It’s been a while since I have written. Our summer, like those of many people we know, was highly unusual. First and foremost, we tried to stay as close to home (within a three hour drive at least) as possible. I did miss “road trip” traveling this summer and being home more than usual, I found myself gravitating towards movies on TV that had scenes of Europe. (We were supposed to go back to Italy this year.)

One night Chocolat was on and I found myself looking fondly not only at Johnny Depp but also at Juliette Binoche who plays the character of “Vianne.” (Fun fact about Julie: I love windy days!) Consequently, when Vianne and her daughter Anouk travel to a new town “whenever the north wind blows” and somehow come up with a magic chocolate recipe that becomes their livelihood, well, that just made me want to travel even more.

I’ve always been a traveler and this blog was supposed to reflect that. Consequently, not being able to travel this summer because of the pandemic was a challenge. Therefore, we made do. Unfortunately, I traded in traveling for online shopping. Yes, I became one of those awful people who would eagerly wait every day for our local postman, UPS woman or FedEx guy to walk up our very long driveway, dutifully carrying the stuff we purchased.

They, invariably, wore a smile as they worked and I would thank them profusely for delivering all the things we ordered. Granted, some of the items purchased weren’t necessary but ultimately some of them came in very handy.

Two summers ago I had bought Marisa McClellan’s book, Food In Jars , but had not attempted a single recipe! When I tried to order the jars that I needed, I found that all the mason jars to be had in the entire Northern Hemisphere were back-ordered for at least 2 months. This would have been fine had it been May (the beginning of the growing season) but not August when suddenly I had tons of green beans that would be perfect to “put up!” Beets and garlic were showing up in the farmer’s markets, too, and tomatoes, well, let’s just say there were lots and lots of tomatoes that were waiting to be canned.

One day after my now nearly daily visit to the supermarket, I found some amber-colored jars and even though they were “wide-mouthed,” I bought them anyway. I learned to can “dilly” beans and ginger-infused beets but when I put them in the dark jars it came to me. The reason no one buys dark canning jars is because you can’t see what’s inside! Luckily, a couple of my beans managed to edge their way to one side so I could at least distinguish between the beans and the beets.

I also finally got to use a huge pot I had bought years ago with every intention of perhaps trying to steam my own lobsters. I never actually did that, preferring to buy them already cooked but luckily this pot turned out to be the perfect size and height for submerging mason jars in preparation for canning. When I realized you need lots and lots of mason jars when canning enormous amounts of produce (not just four!), I went back online and found some pint-sized ones with a delivery date of only three weeks. (A month later those same mason jars had also doubled in price but I ordered them again anyway.)

I also learned to make my own lobster rolls (buying the aforementioned lobsters already steamed for the awesome price of $5.99 a pound). Then I began to wonder why all these years (last summer in particular when we were driving through Maine towards Prince Edward Island) we were paying $25.00 or more for a mediocre lobster roll for lunch! (Second photo is one of my really yummy lobster rolls not an over-priced restaurant version.)

Then there were the tomatoes! Yikes, I think I now know why people easily can cucumbers to make pickles and buy tons of berries to make jam but do you know how many tomatoes you need to make sauce? You literally need a box full of tomatoes that will (if you’re lucky) yield less than a dozen jars of delicious, but thin (imagine V-8) sauce.

Besides canning, Lynn and I decided to start hiking. Since we live a mere 30 minutes from one section of the Adirondack Park, there was really no reason not to walk. Problem was, everywhere we went, there were tons of people hiking as well. We decided to try and limit our outings to only going out during the week (weekends being verboten) only to discover that many others had a similar idea.

We walked up Kane Mountain – a challenge for me before I bought a good walking stick since I’m not only afraid of heights but I had trouble catching my breath when hiking up and down the mountain. (I was never a smoker just out of shape.) I also didn’t expect to find all those tree roots! If you are as inexperienced a hiker as I am, one little root could definitely send you falling either on your face or your behind!

But as they say, if you don’t do the climb, you don’t get the view. Here’s the tower I managed to climb!

And here’s the reward:

After that challenge though, we opted for more sedate hikes. We sought out rail trails and easy paths always hoping for something with a view.

We bought hiking poles, an insulated backpack for these journeys and always made sure to have a cooler in the car for unexpected farm stands.

We visited numerous state parks and collected many rocks on the shoreline of Lake Ontario.

We revisited Chimney Bluffs near Wolcott, NY, and discovered Tibbetts Point Lighthouse which overlooked the Saint Lawrence River.

We hiked quite a few trails in the Adirondack Park but also drove miles both north and south of us in search of the perfect waterfall.

The summer had been very dry so every time we drove two hours plus we were happy if the water was actually cascading over the rocks and not just a trickle.

We frequently packed a lunch, usually a sandwich or bagel (plus I would begrudgingly pack potato chips for Lynn since he loves chips) but made sure to also pack some fresh fruit. We would occasionally try to visit a winery during the week (thinking that weekends would be more crowded) only to find that similar to our hiking adventures, many of these establishments were just as packed on a sunny Tuesday!

When we ate out, we would only eat at establishments where we could sit outside. And the menu had to have at least one item that I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) make myself. (See the problem with being a decent home cook?) Most of the time we got lucky; look at this beautiful version of a “Falafel Scottish Egg” as the topping on a bed of arugula encased in a cucumber “ring” while lying in a pool of Romesco sauce! (We had this lovely appetizer for lunch one day at the Otesaga Hotel in Cooperstown. )

When we weren’t out “wandering,” we would hang out on the deck. We would fight (yes, literally) over who got to water the vegetable garden in the back of the house and the flowers and bushes in the front of the house. (Hey, it was an activity.)

In between I baked. A pound cake baked in a Bundt pan seemed like a good idea at the time even though it was big enough to feed eight! A quiche is always a welcome lunch addition and I even tried to make chocolate-filled brioche courtesy of a Dorie Greenspan recipe. (They were belly-bombs!)

We bought a new grill which resulted in me trying to find something to grill that I hadn’t made before. Wait! Want to see the instructions on “how to put the grill together?”

How about an Eric Ripert recipe for grilled romaine that’s slathered with mayonnaise, Parmesan and some anchovy paste? What about a Mediterranean spin (that would be olives and tomatoes) on some home-grown asparagus?

The few times we did take-out, we often had to drive 60-70 miles to bring home sushi or oysters on the half shell. (That sounds reasonable, right?)

And on those days that I was working, we would have salad, or my old 1970’s standby, tomatoes stuffed with homemade tuna salad.

And then there was the sand box. I decided we needed a swing so Lynn built a sandbox, too. We hung up the swing (also purchased online) and one windy day (scenes of Chocolat perhaps?), the branch snapped. In hindsight, was I perhaps trying to swing my way to a make-believe travel adventure? Of course, it wasn’t a clean break but a messy, dangling break that required an amputation!

We even blew up a large kiddie pool complete with beach balls and a couple of “donut” floats. (We never did get the pool level even after three months!)

And purchased some new chairs and a fire pit!

Our children came to see us a few times this past summer and we were careful to social distance and eat outside. When we were inside, we kept the patio doors wide open and they, and their respective partners, were kind enough to get COVID tested before they came up for a visit. Each and every time after they left though Lynn and I both felt sad. (We miss them!)

Going into the fall season, we’ve been hiking a bit less but at least trying to walk closer to home. We walk along the Erie Canal nearly every day (even in the rain) and try to find some paths we haven’t explored yet. One day, we found the remains of an abandoned building, reminding us just how prosperous the town was way back when.

In the meantime, the minute the weather started to get colder, I made dumplings and my version of Ramen.

Now that we are a few days away from turning back the clocks and going into true fall season, we’ve started to put all our outdoor “toys” away. We got the snowblower repaired (it broke last season) and put extra mulch on our rose bushes.

We visited an orchard the other day to get some apples since my second order of mason jars finally arrived and making apple sauce is on my “to do” list. I was also very tickled at the sight of our Amish farmers stack of pumpkin decorations.

Is it too soon to look forward to next summer? I believe so, especially “whenever the north wind blows.”

Until our next “Let’s Go” adventure.

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Some Milestone Memories

Just a few weeks ago here in the Mohawk Valley we thought spring was upon us. The tulips were blooming and the bamboo started to grow back as well. Then we woke up one morning to snow.

It gave me time to reflect on how life takes unexpected turns and weather even more so. Since we have been sheltering in place like millions of people all over the world during this pandemic, Lynn and I have spent a lot of time together. Luckily, we never run out of things to talk about – mostly we discuss places we’ve traveled to with a couple of foodie meal reminiscences thrown in for good measure. It’s precisely because we have traveled so much that I’ve come to realize how many memories we have shared together.

“I spoke to you first,” my husband Lynn said to me at dinner the other night. “You know, I kept seeing you on the elevator but you ignored me.”

I had to laugh when he said this to me. I had heard the story before but now that we have been home together every single day and night (except for the occasional trip to the supermarket, liquor store or pharmacy), I actually had time to think about way back when. Full confession: I don’t remember seeing him on an elevator! I don’t think this makes me a terrible person or bad wife, it just means I remember things differently.

For example, I remember the day we met at a dorm party. It was October 6, 1979 and I even remember what I was wearing (white jeans, light blue top). But it makes me wonder, on the day we “officially” met, could we have ever envisioned 41 years later that we would be sheltering in place in a Big Red House a mere 75 miles from where it all started? Highly unlikely.

Want to see what I looked like back then? Yes, I did in fact prefer to wear peasant skirts and a BLOUSE!

Prior to our purchasing the Red House, we used to spend a lot of time in California; January after the holidays (our Christmas gift to each other) and again in September/October for our anniversary and hopefully also timing it with “crush” if we were in Northern California. Who wouldn’t want to look at beautiful vineyards filled with grapes, drink copious amounts of wine and drive the coast – especially with views like this?

If we weren’t in California, then we were in Europe. Often we even took the kids. The first and only time we have been to Berlin we took them with us. If I went back to Berlin now and revisited the Brandenburg Gate, I would probably wonder where they had wandered off to.

Lynn and I have also been fortunate to have traveled to Paris many times. But to this day, even if it’s just the two of us in Paris, I still think of Nicholas skateboarding in front of the Eiffel Tower!

And Rachel? Could she have posed for a picture any prettier than in Monet’s garden in Giverny?

During this pandemic, I started to think about all the family trips for other families that may never happen. What about first dates and chance encounters that are missed? Remember the scene in Back to the Future where Michael J. Fox (playing the character Marty McFly) realizes that if his parents don’t meet and you know, kiss big time, he, himself, would not have been born. And remember how he then spends a good part of the movie watching himself slowly fade away on a photograph he’s holding in his hand? That’s how I kind of feel these days about memories that aren’t happening.

Would our life together have been different if we had never gone to California? This picture of us (one of my favorites actually) wouldn’t exist. Would we understand and appreciate farm to table cooking and good wine as much?

What if we had never traveled with our kids? Rachel never would have been standing on a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

And what about smooching the Blarney Stone? There wouldn’t be a photograph of the four of us standing on the ramparts of the Blarney Castle in Ireland. (P.S. I didn’t kiss the rock, I just looked at it.)

These past few weeks I’ve started to think not only of trips we’ve made together but of birthdays we celebrated too.

Here’s the cake that I made for Rachel’s birthday 10 years ago!

That was the cake for the “family” party. She also had a sweet 16 and celebrated with some of her girlfriends with a limo ride and dinner at a popular restaurant in NYC. She’s so beautiful here in her dress!

How many of these milestone events now during our “stay at home” order will have to be spent at home and not celebrated according to plan? Will these celebrations ever be made up or will we just do something on a smaller scale or ignore them totally and move on?

One of my nieces, Daniella, shared some of her thoughts with me about not having the sweet 16 party she was supposed to have. She wrote, “I really wanted to go to school for my birthday to see my friends and everything but school got canceled 3 days before. And then we found out on my birthday that the restaurant was closed…so everyone came over for pizza that night. I was supposed to have a party and that never happened. And we were supposed to see a Broadway play and that’s been postponed. ”

She also mentioned other friends whose parties keep getting pushed back and knows friends who have “just sat at home on their birthday.” She told me she really “did luck out” with the small gathering she was able to have in her honor.

I think that’s a really good attitude to have these days.

This Memorial Day weekend is bittersweet. Usually by this time of year I’m struggling with the stress of what we call the “end of the school year finish line.” But since I’m working from home these days, the finish line is a lot easier. Normally, Lynn and I have already mapped out summer vacation plans or at least a road trip or two. This year we were thinking about going back to Nova Scotia – an area we haven’t visited in 30 years. We were also thinking about a repeat visit to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater in Pennsylvania on the way to Nashville.

Then there is Lake Superior. It’s the only one of the “Great Lakes” we haven’t seen together. And when I get an idea in my head about doing something or going somewhere, eventually I make it happen. Apparently, that won’t be the case this summer.

It’s probably the traveling part that I miss the most coupled with the knowledge going forward that there may be no travels whatsoever for us anytime soon. Does this mean we will simply be “camping” forever at the Red House?

I think this is actually okay. We’ve managed to finally catch up on some overdue home projects. After all, it’s been a little less than a year since we permanently moved up to the Mohawk Valley. And yes, believe it or not, there is still one box that hasn’t been unpacked because it’s filled with pictures and some art work that either needs to be framed and/or hung on a wall.

There has also been quite a bit of gardening. I even bought myself a new pair of gardening gloves which I found particularly charming in that they bizarrely had my paternal grandmother’s name stitched on the side.

I realize that this sheltering in place has not only compromised our lifestyle but made us redefine family and home. Now we spend days deliberately and carefully avoiding any contact with anyone. There are signs taped on the floor of one of the few stores we frequent – directing us where to stand and which direction to walk. And always reminding us to “social distance” and remain six feet apart.

Meanwhile, the deer on our property obviously aren’t following the “rules,” they are congregating in larger groups than we’ve seen before.

But I have to think that this pandemic has compromised so many memories. So much of our childhood and young adulthood relies on certain milestones – whether it be a sweet 16 or school graduation. To make matters even worse, it’s the elderly parents and grandparents who can’t celebrate these milestones with us. I’ve seen pictures of people waving to their parents and grandparents through a window. This saddens me. What about those folks who are deemed too “vulnerable” to even go outside to shop or take a simple walk in case they are exposed to the virus? What memories will they have other than of being stuck at home?

Pictures, of course, help immensely in trying to remember how life had been. But you can’t take a photograph of an important milestone if the milestone doesn’t happen.

I mean, look at sweet Nicholas when he won a plaque for competing in a karate tournament on Long Island!

Or Rachel on her first trip to France when I asked her to turn around so I could photograph her in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles!

Meanwhile, as we prepare for the summer months, it’s good to spend time outside; gardening (as mentioned) helps immensely. Most of the vegetables are planted and I’m working on a new planter box filled with herbs as well.

This is a photograph I took of a mural painted on a hotel room wall in St. Paul de Vence one summer when we were traveling through the south of France. It’s quite lovely isn’t it? Sigh, I do miss that life.

There’s a lot of time for reflection these days. Lynn and I have been lucky. We don’t know anyone personally who has gotten sick or died from COVID-19. We do know many people who have lost their jobs and are struggling with meager unemployment checks and countless bills to pay. We have tried to help our local farmers by purchasing CSA shares and shopping at their small farm stands when we can. We have tried to limit our online shopping, choosing instead to support local butchers and bakers and liquor stores. We play a lot of Scrabble. We have watched more TV than we normally do but we try to limit the amount of news we watch because it’s just too depressing. We have repeatedly cleaned the house and organized drawers and thought of even more projects to do both inside and outside our home.

Actually, like my niece Daniella wrote, I think we did “luck out.” And while I miss our travel life , I’m okay with this new “normal. ”

Until our next “Let’s Go” adventure.

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Cooking, Baking and Some Reflections on Family Life During COVID-19

Since we have been sheltering in place since March 10 (the school district on Long Island that I work for was the first to close because of a confirmed Coronavirus case), it has given me ample time to reflect on the many things I’m grateful for.

First and foremost that the house I live in now is the biggest house we’ve ever owned. There are lots of rooms to wander in and out of, plus a choice of where not only to work but read as well. I also, finally, have a kitchen that’s really big. This means that when I’m cooking, it’s perfectly okay for people to hang out and watch me do so. (Wouldn’t it be lovely to have a family party/feast right about now? I think so.)

There’s been a lot of cooking. There’s been a lot of eating. I have discovered cookbooks that I bought or were gifted to me over 30 years ago. I now have the time to read through them and I have even attempted to make some of the recipes. After all, who wouldn’t want to at least leaf through this giant “coffee table” book of Provence, especially when you can’t go there anytime soon!

There’s also been a lot of baking. Since I don’t particularly like baking and reluctantly do it around the Christmas season, this has become a revelation for me. Now I’ve finally come to understand why I originally hated it; it just takes way too much time to bake things. Suddenly, I’ve come to appreciate it! Why? Because all those steps that are necessary to get dough to rise or butter to soften, well, are actually perfect to follow now when all one has is time. So far I’ve made muffins and bread and a fairly simple Dorie Greenspan apple galette.

I even made my first tray of baklava! I remember years ago trying to work with phyllo and not understanding the concept. What do you mean I had to brush this very fragile dough with melted butter while keeping the sheets of dough I was not using under a “damp” cloth. Now I get it. Note to self: see you can teach an old dog new tricks!

I’ve also been making dishes that are labor-intensive. I’m not going so far as to pretend I’m Julie Powell cooking every single recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking cookbook (remember she wrote a cooking blog during the aftermath of 9/11 that became a book that morphed into a movie). I have, however, been attempting to cook things I don’t normally make – like challah. I mean come on braiding strands of dough? I could barely braid my daughter’s hair when she was little let alone some dough.

All this cooking by the way, if anyone has been married as long as I have, has made my husband very happy. Apparently, even though I’m a very good cook, he likes the fact that I’m making things I’ve never made or haven’t made in years. Most of which is not very good for him (or me). Case in point: Tempura Fried Shrimp.

And then I spent an entire Sunday afternoon (not that it really matters what day it is anymore) making a new meatball recipe. I know, I know, I don’t like meatballs very much either. But I opened a cookbook, Italian Regional Cooking, (seen here among many others on the shelf above my stove) that Ada Boni wrote in 1969 and I couldn’t resist trying her

Polpetta di Carne also known as “Meatballs in Tomato Sauce Neapolitan Style.” Why? Because I was interested in how combining chopped meat with golden raisins and nuts coupled with bread crumbs, parsley, garlic and “lard” (note: I substituted 2 slices of bacon) would taste. Dare I reveal you have to fry the meatballs and then simmer the whole thing in a big batch of tomato sauce? PS: They were good!

Besides the cooking I’m also working from home. This turned out to be much easier than I thought it would be primarily because our outside IT company was able to get me up and running very quickly. While there are certain components to the job that take 3x as long to do remotely, overall everything is getting done. And ultimately, that’s all that matters.

But working at home has also given me time to reflect on what it would be like if our kids were still young. When I worked at FIT in New York City (and before flex-time was even a concept), I managed to negotiate a four day work week so I could stay home when both our son and daughter were little. I would spend the extra day off (usually Friday) with our first born and sometimes we would go feed the ducks at a small pond in the neighborhood. Other times we’d visit a local amusement park (Nunley’s on Long Island before they tore it down to build a Pep Boys) so he could ride around in a little car.

After lunch and a nap (his not mine), we would color and read and sing songs. Later he would watch me make dinner and when he got older (like around the ripe old age of 3), he was able to make a sandwich on his own or at least pretend he could.

When our daughter arrived five years later, we would walk on the boardwalk in Long Beach, NY. Since my braiding skills even then were lousy, at least I managed to pull her hair back into what I consider a very posh pony tail.

And when she got older, she and I would walk on the sand, often slowly, so she could stop to pick up pretty shells and colorful rocks.

Today during this state of “PAUSE” in New York, I think about parents who are at home with their school-age children and the very many demands that are put upon them. If the parents are trying to work remotely and the kids have school work to complete, too, well say no more. With probably limited outdoor activity and no fun excursions to a beach or boardwalk or local park, I can only imagine the high levels of stress for everyone in that household.

I’m also wondering how Lynn and I would cope with raising teenagers during this time. Both our son and daughter were very independent. Could we conceivably have asked them not to leave the house during this time to go hang out and visit their friends? If we had tried to make them stay home would they have listened to us? I think probably not.

In the meantime, my parents, now in their 80’s, are home on Long Island. Our daughter lives close by with her boyfriend and she does check in with them via phone and an occasional drive-by. Our son and his wife are in Astoria. They run every day to break up the monotony of being at home and trying to work from home. They not only call the grandparents but Facetime us frequently, too. For that I’m very happy. And while I love the tremendous amount of space and property we have at the Red House, I miss our children during these very trying times.

For now, I will keep cooking and baking and working from home. And for all the kids out there, the young ones in particular who are pretend doctors and bakers and carnival-makers (like the two you see below), you never know, some of them might actually remember this time fondly.

Until our next “Let’s Go” adventure.

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Suddenly, A Wedding

This past Friday, March 13th, we went to a wedding. In Manhattan. In the middle of this insane Coronavirus outbreak!

Things being what they are (and changing every single day it feels like), our son Nicholas and his girlfriend (now wife) Shirley decided last Wednesday afternoon that they had to get married. As in as soon as legally possible.

Their original wedding was scheduled for April 3, 2020. It was to be a small affair with a trip to the New York City Marriage Bureau followed by a wine bar gathering on the Lower East Side with some friends and family.

We had rented a large hotel suite. We had purchased Amtrak train tickets to get down to Manhattan. We had made lunch and dinner reservations for the day before and after their wedding.

What happened on Wednesday you ask that moved up this event so suddenly? Two things: First, Condé Nast (where Shirley works) decided to close the offices in One World Trade Center because of the virus. So, upon hearing this, Nicholas met up with Shirley and they went to get their marriage license right away. After all, it was a mere 15 minute walk from her office to the City Clerk. Also their thinking at the time was if this gets much worse really quickly, that office might close as well. Therefore, after a minimal wait and a $35 licensing fee, the ball was set in motion.

By Thursday afternoon, Nicholas was calling us in the Mohawk Valley to let us know that he and Shirley were getting married on Friday around noon and they would “find” a witness somewhere. There was an urgency to his phone call which I understood.

A few hours after Mom and Dad had finished dinner (that would be Lynn and I) and a bottle of wine as well, this Mom decided she wasn’t missing her son’s wedding – Coronavirus or no Coronavirus. After all, I do the commute down to Long Island once a week anyway. Driving to NYC would be a no-brainer, right?

By 10 p.m. Thursday night, I had called Nicholas back to tell him we would be there and could be his “witnesses.” He was quick to agree to this new plan and had a single word for his father and I.

“Cool,” he said.

What to Wear!

We quickly packed some clothes – a dress, heels and stockings for me in case the bride and groom were “dressing up.” A jacket, shirt and tie for Lynn. I also packed some toiletries and a black frilly top. Last but not least, my favorite silk kimono jacket that I had bought one year when we were visiting San Francisco’s Chinatown. It’s a lovely shade of olive green with a hint of gold and some cranberry-colored appliqued velvet flowers. That would work, right?

Don’t Forget the Pearls!

Of course I barely slept that night! By 6:30 a.m. we were up and at the last moment I thought of Shirley. Would she have time to put together an outfit? What about flowers? Did she have pearls? I rummaged through my chest of drawers and found the (fake) pearls (now yellowed with age no less) that I wore to my own wedding 34 years ago – also on the 13th!

And I found some “real” pearls Lynn had given me either for a birthday or an anniversary one year. I thought of the saying: “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.” If nothing else, the 34-year-old pearls could count as both “borrowed” and “old.” I put the two strands in a box and threw them in the bag we were taking down to NYC.

“Pepper”

It was damp, foggy and pouring rain as we drove down to pick them up in Astoria. They were busy getting dressed when we walked into their apartment. Lynn and I quickly changed too, opting for our more casual outfits. Their “baby” Pepper couldn’t have cared less what Mommy and Daddy were going to do that day! She was just chilling on the bed waiting for everyone to leave so she could get back to her nap!

From Astoria we drove into Manhattan taking the 59th Street bridge. We pulled into the first parking garage we saw that was closest to the New York City Marriage License Bureau. By now it had stopped raining but I took extra umbrellas anyway – after all we didn’t want the bride or groom to get wet!

Want to see what they were wearing?

The Bride and Groom

Here they both are waiting in front of cashier #7 (empty at the time) for their number to be called. First they had to pay the $25 marriage ceremony fee; then you wait some more to have the marriage ceremony performed. (Yes, it is in fact like DMV.)

Since we didn’t have time to place a wedding announcement in The New York Times (just kidding) here’s what I came up with:

Ladies and Gentlemen: For the early afternoon event, the bride, Ms. Shirley Cruz, wore a spaghetti strap black-and-white checked jumpsuit. On her head was a French beret – giving her outfit she told me a “French film noir kind of motif.” (I loved it!). Ms. Cruz will keep her maiden name.

P.S. Look at the pearls on her neck! Yes, she did in fact wear both necklaces! And wait, I think her blue beret qualified as the “something blue” she needed for this happy occasion!

Ladies and Gentlemen: The groom, Mr. Nicholas Parish, was outfitted in a smashing Liberty-print inspired floral necktie, suit jacket and gray dress shirt. On his head he wore his hair, still slightly damp from the morning shower. Mr. Parish will keep his name, too.

The Crowd

It was pretty crowded that day at the Marriage Bureau. We wondered whether others there had the same idea that Nicholas and Shirley had the day before. If they close down city buildings, how will people get married? The fun part about being in New York City (and one of the few things I miss now that we have permanently moved upstate) is that you get to see all kinds of things (and people) you don’t see anywhere else.

Okay, so the few women I saw wearing a white gown (or variation thereof), I figured were the brides. But then there were the other “couples” where I truly couldn’t figure out who was getting married to who! One guy I saw wore a top hat with a gray silk suit. He reminded me of a circus ringmaster or at the very least a lion tamer. I kept looking around to see if someone else would show up with some sort of exotic animal on a leash! I’m sure if such a creature did appear, they (and their handler) probably thought it would be perfectly normal to bring “it” to this particular “party.”

Then there was the couple who were in gym clothes and were waiting patiently for their number to be called while clutching their water bottles and their yoga mats. Even though I do have a VERY vivid imagination, I actually could NOT visualize what their ceremony would be like inside the clerk’s chambers! Dare I even mention the couple who brought their three children – all under the age of five?

Meanwhile, to kill some time we took pictures. Here’s Lynn and I with the groom. Lynn and I with the bride. This is what you look like when you don’t have time to “fix up good.” Us, not Nicholas or Shirley; they both looked gorgeous!

The Bouquet

The night prior, Shirley had the foresight to go out to get some flowers and make her own bouquet. She said she was lucky that a friend had told her how to bind the flowers together. They also were smart enough to put them in the fridge overnight to keep them as fresh looking as possible.

I love the white hydrangeas, the lilac-colored roses, baby’s breath and the dark purple freesia. This is an awesome bouquet! Do you know she told me it cost her a little over $20 to make it?

The Ceremony

Finally, their number was called (C66!) and we waited a few more minutes to go into a private room with a city employee. It was the four of us. The clerk read the script, the bride and groom said, “I do’s,” exchanged rings and kissed. The video I shot shows this took exactly 1:28.

Once outside the main waiting area we took a few more photographs. Nicholas lifting up his new bride! Don’t you just love Shirley’s boots? (I do!) And wait, weren’t those NEW boots? See where I’m going here?

And then outside the building.

Should I mention while taking this shot I was also on the Resy app trying to make a lunch reservation? Yep, I really am that talented!

The Wedding Lunch

We walked to Augustine. Chef Markus Glocker, who all four of us know from the Tribeca restaurant, Bâtard, was cooking lunch that day. Little did we realize that within 24 hours many NYC restaurants would be temporarily stopping service. By Monday evening (as I’m writing this post), Governor Cuomo would close all restaurants, bars and movie theaters in New York State!

When we walked into the nearly empty restaurant the hostess greeted us with, “Would you like to wash your hands?”

We absolutely did and followed her as she pointed out the restrooms in a different part of the building. (Augustine is located in The Beekman Hotel.)

Only then did we sit down at our table.

It was their wedding. We had champagne! We had oysters! We had appetizers! We had entrees – steak frites, arctic char, schnitzel, moules. WE DID NOT SHARE OUR PLATES. We had wine! And at the end, Chef Markus brought us out desserts on the house! Want to see our feast?

At the end of this very long but beautiful day, everyone decided it was absolutely the right thing to do. The best wedding I’ve ever been to! (Okay, I’ve only been to a handful of weddings but still.) Easy and simple. The way life should be.

Here they are:

Until our next “Let’s Go” adventure.

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Teaching Myself To Cook One Pot Meals

Last weekend I challenged myself in the cooking arena. I pretended I didn’t know how to cook and found three New York Times recipes and one recipe from Food & Wine that I thought I would “try” to make. These were supposed to be simple one-pot meals, which as many working families know, is a blessing if you are trying to put together a quick dinner.

When we were living on Long Island, I would spend a good portion of every Sunday afternoon cooking for the kids (and us) to make sure there were at least a couple of decent meals I could simply warm up in the oven during the week. As a full-time working mother, I often wouldn’t be home until 6 p.m. and Lynn (when he was lucky) wouldn’t be home until nearly 7:30 p.m. In other words, I needed all the ready-to-go meal help I could get!

Over the years, I had developed a few simple meals that I would make repeatedly. Chili, roast chicken, meat sauce for pasta, and schnitzel. I was able to rotate these simple dishes for quite a few years until the kids grew up. Luckily for me, they both got after school jobs at an early age and often just ate whatever they could grab on the run.

I had learned to cook at an early age. I was not even a teen (12 to be precise) when cooking was an activity I really enjoyed. Even back then I could be trusted to put together some sort of chicken or pork dish in a mushroom cream sauce, make crepes (sweet and savory) and even dessert (usually cookies or a cake). Living in Munich, Germany, also had a lot to do with it. I wasn’t into sports, television didn’t come on until after 6 p.m., and there are only so many books a young girl could read!

To set myself up for this weekend challenge I decided I would try to follow the recipes exactly as they were written. This was a bit difficult for me because as I read through some of them, I knew not only was there a better way to do it, but sometimes even a better ingredient could have been included in the dish. Plus, since I’ve been cooking so long (over 46 years at this point – gulp!), I only follow a recipe when I have to bake.

First Dish – Shrimp Scampi With Orzo

I always have a bag of frozen shrimp in my freezer. This may have something to do with me always hoping for “unexpected” guests and being able to whip up some sort of shrimp dish in a hurry if I have to. The fact that I’ve never once in my entire life had an “unexpected” guest visit anyplace I’ve lived is irrelevant. Therefore, since I had the shrimp already, the only thing I would need to purchase for this first dish was a box of orzo. Everything else was already in my pantry, too.

I cleaned the shrimp and cooked the orzo. Luckily the night before I had watched a Jamie Olivier cooking show where he added raw shrimp to a dish of pasta he was cooking. I usually like to cook shrimp before I add it to any other ingredient that’s already cooked. The fact that he was so nonchalant about adding raw shrimp to the pasta gave me the courage I needed to do the recipe exactly as written.

The orzo cooked up very quickly as did the shrimp. When it was done, I thought there was a bit too much liquid. Yes, there was lots of parsley and white wine which I love but I found even the spritz of lemon at the end was overwhelming. I’ve made my own version of this dish in the past, adding some roasted tomatoes and chunks of feta which gives it the creaminess I think this dish was lacking. Here’s a picture of The New York Times version, followed by mine.

Second Dish – Cheesy Baked Pasta with Radicchio

The next night I put together a baked pasta with radicchio that I had seen in Food & Wine. The challenge here was two-fold. First, where the hell was I going to find radicchio in upstate New York without driving an hour east to a Whole Foods or an hour west to Wegmans?

Luckily, a 10 minute drive to the over-priced Hannaford supermarket in the next town proved they could sometimes surprise you. They did in fact carry radicchio and low and behold they actually had three whole heads for a mere $4.99 a pound! (Note the sarcasm here, please.)

I picked up the radicchio that looked the least wilted and was actually bizarrely happy that I found it so close to home. I mean really, look at the color of this vegetable! Yep, I did play around with this image courtesy of Instagram but it shows the layers really well this way.

The supermarket also had prosciutto on sale which was a plus since I needed it for the dish, too. I sauteed the red onions, sliced the radicchio into ribbons as instructed and added the garlic and red wine vinegar. I cooked the pasta and then poured it into a buttered baking dish. Normally, I don’t like any pasta (other than lasagna) that’s baked, particularly macaroni and cheese. I could never understand why cooks insist on putting a breadcrumb topping on such a classic American dish. To me, the whole point of mac and cheese is to eat creamy mac and cheese not breadcrumb-dry mac and cheese. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I mixed together the goat cheese but substituted gouda for the fontina cheese because fontina was nowhere to be found. I also omitted the nutmeg because I simply don’t like nutmeg. As I made my way through the steps of this dish, I thought cooking all of these ingredients separately was just WAY TOO TIME CONSUMING. I thought about how quickly I can usually put together a simple cheese and veggie pasta dish (which is basically what this dish consisted of). Had I not been doing this “cooking exercise,” I don’t think I would have baked this dish either.

Was it cheesy? Yes and it actually tasted better the second day because all the flavors had time to sit and simply blend together.

Here’s a picture of Food & Wine’s version, followed by mine.

Besides the pasta that day I also whipped together a “simple crusty bread” recipe that I hadn’t made in years. Originally, I thought it was the same recipe my Dad uses when he makes bread but alas, I was incorrect. This New York Times recipe got a ton of press when it came out in 2007 because it had four simple ingredients (yeast, kosher salt, water and all-purpose flour) that you just mix together. How could you go wrong?

As I was trying to maneuver the dough into the pan I was using, I remembered why I hated this recipe. The dough was so wet it was physically impossible to pick up! Plus, more than one-quarter of it kept sticking to my fingers, my hands and the countertop. Also, I really like kneading dough and this recipe omits that step.

The dough did rise however and I took it out of the oven when I “thought” it was done. Looking back it should have cooked about 10 more minutes to get a crispier crust and not have such a dense interior.

Meanwhile back on the farm (just kidding), it was really cold outside. So cold in fact that there were these really long icicles that were hanging off the roof of the house! In addition to the cold, the wind was howling outside, truly sounding like a freight train. When we woke up in the morning (after getting a nice glimpse of a crescent moon and Venus the night before), I opened the fridge and almost everything was frozen! What had happened overnight?

The only thing I can figure out is that the fridge is right next to a window and perhaps the cold air just kept blowing into that area all evening? This meant that the potatoes I had bought to make that night’s adventure in cooking dish had frozen, too! I tried to salvage some of them but just found myself getting angry that I had spent money on food I then couldn’t eat.

Want to see the icicles?

Third Dish – Salmon With Potatoes and Horseradish-Tarragon Sauce

At one point I owned Chef George Lang’s cookbook “The Cuisine of Hungary” but alas I think I lost it in the last move! That said, the fact that this was his recipe intrigued me especially since 1) I love salmon, 2) I love horseradish and 3) I love sour cream! (After all my great-grandmother was from Hungary.)

I sliced the few potatoes that didn’t have “frost bite” as paper thin as I could without the aid of a mandoline. (I’m terrified of mandolines.) I put them in a baking dish as instructed and added some shallots. This is what they looked like after cooking for about 20 minutes.

Then I mixed together some sour cream, tarragon and horseradish. I was supposed to “brush” the sauce on top of the salmon that would then be placed on top of the potatoes. When I did this, however, the sauce ended up looking like frosting and even after the salmon had cooked, it still looked that way! Which was really kind of weird.

See what I mean?

The salmon was very moist prepared this way though and I loved the sauce and the potatoes. Bottom line: I would make this dish again.

Fourth Dish – Dijon Chicken With Shallots and White Wine

Holy Moly. This recipe called for 12-15 medium shallots! I had bought six, used one for the above-mentioned salmon dish which meant I had five left. I thought five would be more than enough, after all these were kind of big anyway.

I melted some butter in a frying pan and sauteed the chicken as instructed. First problem was that the chicken thighs didn’t get as brown as I thought they should. Since I didn’t want to “cheat” by putting them in the oven (which would have given them the brown color I was looking for), I just left them on the stove and added the rest of the ingredients.

This recipe had a lot of wine, almost too much I thought. Ditto for the tomatoes. But the sauce, when it reduced, was really good and ultimately even though the bread didn’t turn out as planned, I grilled up a couple of slices and we ate it with the chicken. If I make this dish again though, it’s definitely going in the oven!

Ultimately, I liked making all of these dishes. It was actually kind of fun to pretend not to know how to cook and follow a recipe pretty much exactly. I do think, however, they might have been too difficult for your average person who doesn’t know their way around a kitchen or even how to shop for some of the ingredients. Luckily for me, this adventure was motivated by the cold weather outside and me wanting to stay inside. After all, we only turn the TV on at night and there really is only so much even this “older” girl can read.

Until our next “Let’s Go” adventure.

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Field Trip: Two Museums in Massachusetts

Since Lynn retired from MoMA we don’t visit as many museums as we had in the past. However, now that we live in Central New York, it’s much more convenient to get to places in Massachusetts and Vermont than when we lived on Long Island. Case in point a few weekends ago we decided to have a short overnight road trip to Wiliamstown, MA. We had never been to see The Clark Art Institute in Williamstown and if we had been to Mass MoCA in nearby North Adams, MA, we didn’t remember it.

The morning of our departure, we woke up to an ice storm that made even venturing out of the house difficult (slippery stairs and a car coated in a sheet of ice).

This gave us a later start than we wanted but eventually, after scraping off the ice and navigating some pretty slippery roads, we were on our way.

The Clark Art Institute

I didn’t expect the building to be modern nor the campus (140 acres) to be so large. Besides the museum itself there is a research center and some hiking trails. We were there specifically to see “Travels on Paper” since we are active travelers and like to see where others have been.

Had I paid more attention to the literature on their website I would have realized it was not a contemporary show but rather artists from the late 1770’s to 1880’s! Not wanting to discredit early attempts at photography or charcoal drawings, I was impressed by how difficult it was for people to travel back then. Often getting to such exotic places (Africa, Hawaii, Egypt, Italy) before decent means of transportation was not only lengthy but arduous and often dangerous.

I found myself focusing on the photographs or drawings of places I had been primarily because I was interested in what certain landscapes looked like 100+ years prior to when we had been there. Hence, this charming watercolor of the famous cliffs of Étretat in Normandy by French artist Eugène Edouard Soulès.

Since Lynn and I had been to see the cliffs and the Normandy beaches with our children one year (2003), I was delighted to see that the artist not only had a blue sky, but also a blue ocean view that day! I suppose he could have fudged a little; maybe it had been a gray day then, too, but isn’t it lovely the artist painted these scenes in various shades of blue?

This was our view that day:

A pink and gray sky with some moss-covered gray rocks and gray water. It was perfect.

Even the title of the show, “Travels on Paper” made me think of all the traveling we have done together. And most importantly, how we capture the trip both photographically and often with the written word in blogs such as this one.

As we walked through the show, I found myself repeatedly captivated by places that somehow looked familiar. Had we been there? Or was it a place that looked similar to other sites we had seen.

I loved this watercolor by a British artist I had never heard of, William Gawin Herdman (1805-1882). The piece is titled “Fantasy Archway with Strolling Couple.”

The arch looks almost like a stage set, a prop. Where does the arch lead to? What do the couple see on the other side besides the trees in the distance? The closest I came in my many travels of seeing a similar-looking arch was in Les Baux, in the Provence region of France.

I remember walking around Les Baux one very hot summer day overwhelmed by both the ruins and the heat. Truthfully, I would have preferred to be the woman in the painting, strolling leisurely through the archway, holding the arm of my beloved, even with the long dress!

MASS MoCA

From The Clark we stopped for a bite to eat at a local restaurant then headed into North Adams to visit MASS MoCA. We thought we had been there before but truthfully didn’t remember the building perhaps confusing the venue with Dia Beacon on the Hudson River. I was impressed with the use of the old factory buildings and wish in the town I live in now (on the Mohawk River) that some of the similar-looking factory buildings could be converted to art spaces, too.

Rainy, gray days are perfect for visiting art museums. I love walking through gallery spaces, looking at the often vibrant art on the wall only to peer outside and watch the rain fall or the wind blow things around. There were also old passageways the museum had retained when designing the space that led from one building to another.

One of its first tenants was a company called Arnold Print Works, a manufacturer of printed textiles. The floors we walked on and the big rooms that now house art held large scale equipment back then. We were often reminded of the people who truly labored here. After all it was a factory and accidents often happened with sometimes grave consequences.

We had come specifically to MASS MoCA to see the Annie Lennox show, “Now I Let You Go…” If you are not familiar with Annie Lennox, she is the Scottish singer-songwriter of Eurythmics fame. But first we wandered through some of the galleries. Here are some Sol LeWitt pieces which I’m fond of not only for the use of his bright crayon-like color palette but his geometric forms.

Then we walked into a large hall and got to look at the amazing sculptures of South African artist Ledelle Moe. Her large forms were so engaging and life-like (even in their reclining mode) that even though I know you are NOT SUPPOSED TO TOUCH THE ARTWORK, I struggled to keep my hands in my coat pockets. I wanted to not only feel the forms but run my hands over these figures in hopes of emotionally capturing the incredible strength of her work.

Her work in this exhibit entitled “When” reminded me of the countless monuments we would see not only when we traveled through Europe, but statues with water features we discovered closer to home. This funny looking guy is from a visit last summer to the Sonnenberg Gardens and Mansion in Canandaigua, NY.

And then I saw the heads. They were just hanging on a wall, similar to death masks and looked to be randomly placed. I’m sure the artist wouldn’t welcome my thoughts on “random placement” but I liked this evocative piece immensely.

I thought of our own meager “head” collection at home. Simple clay or wood faces we had picked up along the way when traveling through Italy.

Then there was Jenny Holzer. Lynn was familiar with her work from MoMA but I was not. I found myself mesmerized by her repetitive texts in various languages. Particularly when she writes that “change is the basis of all history.” I love that line. Along with “stale food is repellent” which speaks to my love of cooking.

When we finally got to the Annie Lennox show, I had to walk around it a few times. First to really understand it. The obviously easy part was looking at the “trophy room” filled with awards and copies of her platinum and gold albums.

The more intellectually challenging component was to understand her “mountain” of collective things. There, assembled on what looked like a mixture of sand and gravel, were important pieces from not only her childhood but her children’s too.

The fact that the title of the show “Now I Let You Go” references our inability as humans to discard “things” that often have emotional significance wasn’t lost on me. Lynn and I have moved six times since 1985. Each time we have moved we have managed to throw a bit more away of our “significant things,” thereby reducing our clutter. Except a few boxes that are in the attic right now – our son’s Hess trucks, his wooden train set, our daughter’s favorite stuffed animals plus the dress she wore for her first Christmas. I haven’t been able to “let go” of their childhood just yet even though they are now both adults.

Case in point: how could we ever throw away this note our daughter scribbled on hotel stationery when we were traveling in Florence one summer? The answer is, you can’t.