her able hands

When I walked out into the parking lot after work yesterday, a flock of robins landed in the grass and the wind had slowed to a breeze. I smelled spring on the air, warm and tufted. I knew just what I would do the minute I got home. After I dropped my bags inside, I squeezed into my work jeans (which I couldn’t comfortably button thanks to all of the cupcake recipes I’ve been testing in recent months, coupled with a sedentary lifestyle spent mostly in front of a computer). As I tied my shoes, Chris and Lila came in from school pickup and her cheeks were rosy red and the balmy smell of outdoors rolled off of her in warm waves.

I asked her if she knew what I was about to do and she threw her arms up in the air and shouted, “Play outside!”

“Yes! And guess what else?!” She stared at me with her mouth ajar, her face transparent in its wonder of what could possibly be more fantastic than playing outside right this minute. “I’m going to plant the peas and the Fava beans!”

And she was all geared up to help as we carried out the box with seed packs and an envelope of inoculant, a bottle of water and an empty container in which to mix the seeds with the black powder. But the minute we came around the back of the house, she spotted David and Fatou out in the cul-de-sac and they came running like the wind to the swing set. David started pumping, laughing and said, “Here we are! We’re all together again!” and the girls nodded wisely. Then he said, “Let’s play together this year and not fight. We’re bigger now.”

!!!

Their conversation turned over and over the facts of their long, lonely winter spent indoors because their parents don’t like the cold. “And that’s silly because cold is fun. It has snow and icicles and sledding and hot chocolate.”

When did we all become such wimps?

Their mothers came too, and I chatted for a moment, but then excused myself to the other side of the yard where I raked leaves off of last year’s carrot bed and drew a few trenches in the cold, but mostly dry soil then dropped the dusted Fava bean seeds in and patted the soil back over them. My first dirt manicure of the season. Then I raked some of the leaves off of the garlic bed I planted over here so the stalks can get a bit more sun and the bed can warm up more. I’ll mulch back around them in a few weeks again to keep the weeds down.

After the kids went home, I wound my way through the woods that isn’t much of a woods anymore, to the beds next door where I saw the full-frontal assault of how sick I got last autumn. I never finished putting the garden to bed, and the tomato trellis had crumbled in on itself and listed to the north wildly. Chris helped me to take it apart and move all of the bamboo poles into a pile. Then I raked out the bed closest to Carol’s house and Lila and I planted more Fava beans (finishing the packet) and an entire pack of Amish Sugar Snaps.

I am ecstatic. For the first time ever, I managed to get peas in the ground before May! I’ll do another bed of sugar snaps, and some shelling peas, and some more of those phenomenal dwarf gray snow peas. Then some spinach and salad greens.

The bigger garlic bed next door is looking mighty awesome with its light green sprouts sticking up four inches. My mouth is already watering at the thought of all of those garlic scapes curling back towards the earth, and then chopped and tossed with butter and parmesan on pasta. Mmmmm.

I’m going to have to start employing that crockpot over the next few months during planting season, so we can come home to dinner mostly ready, then just head outside. There’s so much work to do and just taking these first few steps last night filled me with such joy that I floated through dinner prep, my feet hovering a few inches above the dirty linoleum floor.

I didn’t take any pictures because time flew and our tummys growled wildly, but I’ll leave you with this image from a little over a week ago. Hard to believe we had almost two feet of snow out there just moments ago and I must remind myself that it’s more than possible that we will have that again before we’re finished with winter for this year.

Not that these two nutbags would believe it.

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Spring is going to ramp up pretty quickly around here, I think. We sorted through the tomato, pepper and eggplant seeds last night after dinner and plan to get them started sometime this week. But the Fava Beans, Lima Beans and Peas haven’t made it into the ground just yet, because we got more snow.

The winter sowing containers needed the extra nights of cold, though, so I’m just going to look at it as a gift, as I know they do.

I have some very slow starts in the basement, but finally, after over two weeks, the leeks, broccoli, brussels sprouts, and red celery are coming up. I need to buy a timer for the power strip because I’ve forgotten to switch the lights off several times already. I think I’ll make a trip out at lunchtime to get that and a pump sprayer.

I’m thinking I should order my topsoil in the next couple of weeks.

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I have no idea why I have been forking over between $5 and $7 for organic, too-sweet, too-many ingredient bags and boxes of granola for so many years—granola that tastes, in a word, meh. I guess I didn’t realize how easy it is to make the perfect blend of just exactly what my family’s palate desires in a granola, which is oats, honey, flax seeds and some kind of ground nuts. We don’t like the dried fruit, big nuts scene, or the giant globs of crunchy, sugar-crusted grains that too closely resemble dried turds for my taste.

Maybe it just seemed like such a fussy DIY thing to do when I have so many other things that I have to try to squeeze into so few hours at home. Maybe it was just laziness? Well, I don’t think I’ll be buying pre-made granola ever again. My homemade is the best tasting topping for yogurt I have ever eaten. Ever.

Oat and Honey Granola

5 cups rolled oats
1 cup almond or walnut or pecan meal
1 cup lightly ground flax seed
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup maple syrup

Preheat oven to 275º

Mix all dry ingredients together in a large bowl.
Mix wet ingredients together and pour over dry ingredients. Mix well to coat all of the oats. Pour into two greased 13 x 9 glass baking dishes. Bake until golden, for about an hour and a half, stirring the oats every 20 minutes or so.

Chris asked if it was okay for him to eat some in the mornings, he knew I was so excited about the flavor and thought maybe it was all just for me. Yes. I get like that sometimes. Usually with things nobody else likes anyway, like my pickled turnips. But sometimes it’s more serious, like when I have a bar of Dagoba chocolate with chili flakes. Yeah, that’s a back-off everybody situation. I’ve been known to slap hands reaching towards my Dagoba chocolate.

But I’ll share the granola because there’s nothing that makes me happier than hearing the contented chewing sounds and yummy groans coming from my people when they’re eating something I have made with these two hands.

Lila has asked for “yogurt cereal” just about every day since I made it last week, and I’m probably eating too much of it. That lightly sweet, toasted nutty flavor with the chewy crunch, well, you’re just going to have to take my word for it that it’s the best thing for breakfast and makes one hell of an afternoon snack. Or even better, try it for yourself.

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More cupcake awesomeness happening over here.

I wanted to do something yummy for St. Patrick’s day to bring to work. Corned Beef and Cabbage? Not cubicle friendly by any stretch of the gastroimagination. Beer might help, but is probably not allowed. Sweets are always appreciated. Then I saw this post and knew I had to try stout and chocolate together.

Oh, my.

Oh my, oh my, oh my.

I used this recipe from Dave Lieberman with Droste chocolate and a Guinness stout. The cake came out so spongy and moist (a tiny bit chewy due to about one minute of over mixing) with perfect little puffy domes.

I didn’t follow his recipe for Cream Cheese Frosting exactly. I prefer it with equal parts butter and cream cheese. It’s an incredibly wet frosting, the butter and cheese creamed until fluffy and then whipping cream added and beat until frothy. Then you add your sugar and vanilla. I used vanilla bean paste and too bloody much cream, so had to use more sugar than I wanted to in order to get it to some kind of spreading consistency. I piped it on with a giant round tip and then dusted them with cocoa.

I’m thinking I’ll just go ahead and put them out at breakfast tomorrow, because otherwise I’ll be eating them all day. I had one tonight after supper and I think I’m in love. The frosting is so soft and creamy, with a mild sour, but sweet vanilla intensity and just the perfect texture to go along with the dense, moist cake that’s almost black. The frosting looks like the foamy head on the top of a glass of Guinness.

Bottom’s Up!

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It took a few days longer than I expected to announce my new project, but did you know that it’s really hard to take a picture of your own hand in action? Especially when you don’t know how to use the timer function on your camera (or if there even is one)? Really hard. I used the beautiful new-to-me tripod that Chris brought home from his mother’s house. Apparently his father’s father had quite a photography equipment collecting habit. Alas, no Nikkor lenses. Boo. But a 50 year-old, in perfect condition tripod in its original box. Actually, it looks as if it has never been used. Well, needless to say, I gummed up the works with flour last weekend.

Have I mentioned how much I love kneading bread dough? My dear friend Lorin taught me how to bake bread, way back in 1995, I think. She suggested I start with The Tassajara Bread Book by Edward Espe Brown, and I made starter from a helping of her sourdough mother and got busy one afternoon while Tyler roared around the kitchen pretending to be a dinosaur.

When I reported back to her, I mentioned that I loved the whole experience, and that the bread came out almost as good as hers, but that the instructions for kneading just felt so cumbersome. To fold the dough, roll with two hands, turn, fold, roll with two hands, just felt forced and unnatural. She laughed and said she agreed, and that she just did it the same way she kneads her clay (she’s an amazingly gifted potter) with one hand on the dough at all times, and the other hand cupped around the edge to help guide and turn it in little eighth turns.

Now, I didn’t get that lovely two-handed shot because as I said, no clue if I can or how to use the timer on the camera, so the turning and guiding hand was busy reaching back to press the shutter.

So the next week, I tried her method and it was bliss. I overworked the dough because the motion was so bloody therapeutic. Because I wasn’t thinking, oh wait…I’m supposed to turn and then fold…wait…did I roll before I turned…my whole body sank into the motion and I lost myself in the rhythm. But that was 13 years ago and my body hurts more now, so I sometimes employ the dough hook on the Kitchen Aid for the first five minutes, and then finish the kneading by hand. Arthritis runs in the female line of my family, and while I haven’t suffered with it in a major way, my hands, elbows and shoulders hurt quite a lot after physical work.

And, you know, I’m aging. I don’t notice it very often, but looking at a photo of my hand brings it all, please forgive me, into sharp focus. I’m not 25 anymore, am I? But then, I can do so much more with these hands for having had those 15 years pass through them. Time brings such perspective. Many moons ago, an exquisitely dashing young man held my hands in his and swore they were the softest things he had ever touched. I suspect he would revise that statement now that he’s had a child, because we know there’s nothing softer on this earth than the skin at the nape of a newborn baby’s neck.

And all of this to say that I hope you’ll participate in The Able Hands Photo Project.

Send me a photo of a hand or hands, at work, at rest or at play. Your own or someone else’s. Include a few sentences of description. Say anything, I don’t want to influence the shape of the story, I want to hear it. What do you do with your hands?

Photos should be no larger than 500 pixels wide. I’ll assemble them all on their own page as thumbnails with a slide show for viewing. The individual slides will include the story and your name. Still trying to work out having link-backs within the slide show and I may have to list participants in a blogroll format. You’ll also see an album with rotating photos in the sidebar, and a badge that you can download to put on your blog if you like (as soon as I design it). This will be an ongoing project, so no deadline or cutoff.

Send photos to kelly AT herablehands DOT com and put Able Hands Photo Project in the subject line.

Okay, people! Show me your hands!

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ETA: I started a flickr pool: The Able Hands Photo Project for those of you with flickr accounts, so head on over to join and get busy uploading your awesome hand photos!

If you don’t have an account, you can still send your photos to me via email.

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