her able hands

People, this was such an easy recipe and so absolutely scrumptious. It’s from Martha Stewart’s Original Classics Cookbook via Serious Eats. Oh, my. I’m in a bit of pain today from eating two. It seems my wheat sensitivity is building up again, so time to do a cleanse and lay off for a while. What a glorious way to say goodbye!

The dough was quite sticky and soft when I scraped it out of the bowl and onto the counter to knead after its ten minutes in the KitchenAid with the dough hook.

Five minutes under hand turned it into a springy, silky soft ball of dough that took close to two hours to double in size, even in a warmed oven. But it was only 17º out yesterday, so it had its work cut out for it.

After the rise, I punched it down and rolled it out into a big rectangle and spread the caramelized onions all over. I cut down the onions by half because Chris has a hard time digesting too many onions. I also skipped the nutmeg and used dried thyme and cracked pepper because I wanted something more savory to go with the Butternut Soup (from Joy of Cooking).

The dough after the rise was even silkier, if that’s possible. This is by far the softest dough I’ve ever worked with and had success. When I rolled it up and cut the roll into thick slices, I had to finagle the pieces into the pan for the second rise without squishing them and losing the onions.

But it worked out and after an hour they puffed up beautifully. Thirty five minutes in the oven and they came out golden brown and filling the whole house with the most sweet and savory fragrance.

They were the perfect accompaniment to the soup, which has a bit of ginger and is mellow sweet, creamy and topped with chopped cilantro. Just the meal for a blizzardy night in Ohio. We rounded it off with a green salad and a glass of the grape while watching Michael Clayton (pretty good).

Half of the pan is left, and they’re staring at me from the kitchen counter this morning, just begging for a poached egg and some bacon, but I will not give in to the siren’s call.

My belly really does hurt.

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It was still only dusk when I felt a rumbling and heard Chris say, “What the heck?” More banging. I rolled over and asked him what was going on and he said “I thought it was a nuclear explosion! It’s thundering and lightening.” Um. Why nuclear explosion? What was he dreaming about? Then another huge flash and a long, slow rumble. He got out of bed and pulled the shade aside, revealing a near blizzard flying past the window.

It’s been snowing here since yesterday morning, and we’ve got about a foot out there now, with another 5-7″ predicted for today and overnight. I’m so glad we have no real plans for the weekend, other than tackling some cleaning, sorting, purging. I’ll make some soup today, and try out the recipe for these onion pull-apart rolls I saw online. It’s blowing sideways out there, so it’ll be an indoor play kind of day.

Lila can invite Fatou over to play in the kitchen, maybe they’ll help me peel potatoes and measure flour. Just outside the French doors, on the other side of the deck, the new swingset and playground awaits the spring thaw, but for today, its billowy white blanket continues to grow. Tyler hopes to get some friends together in the basement for a D & D day. Tomorrow, after the sideways wind blows out of town, we’ll all head over to the University for sled riding.

My beautiful Aunt Virginia made that beaded snowflake for Lila for Valentine’s Day and it shines in the window, catching the sunrise in its prisms (if we’re fortunate enough to have a morning without clouds and snow). We have several of these in other windows, and they make me so happy, to have little pieces of art that our loved ones have made with their able hands, bringing such whimsy and joy into our home.

The one big plan for the weekend is one I keep putting off, but can no longer afford to. I’m up against it now, and if I wait any longer, I won’t have decent broccoli, cabbage or brussels sprouts crops. It’s time. I wonder if it’s too late to start some leeks? I think I’ll do a tray, anyway.

My lettuce and bean seeds arrived, and I just loved the little snowman card that accompanied the Seed Savers Exchange order, appropriate, no? I’m excited to try the 3 lettuce varieties I picked up that I’ve never tried before: Yugoslavian Red, Forellenschuss and Reine Des Glaces. I’ll also do Arugula and maybe some mesclun if I still have seed leftover from last year (I think I do). But I’m determined to have head lettuce this year for the first time, ever. And while I’ve felt overwhelmed at the knowledge of how much work my garden will be on top of the full-time job, and have entertained thoughts of just taking this year off, I got a wonderful reminder of why I want to do it last night.

The fridge was pretty empty so we had to make a run to the local grocery store. I’ve always semi-enjoyed shopping there because it’s small and quiet and they have great prices on pantry items. The produce left much to be desired, but for basics, managed just fine. But they’re expanding and doing so while open for business. They pulled down the ceiling and so now it’s tall in there, like going to one of the big box stores. Music blares out of tinny speakers all over the place, set up very high, so it’s this constant mosquito whine of terrible pop music. Things are rearranged just enough to make shopping take twice as long, and I walked around with my list, feeling my consciousness being pulled up out of the top of my head and into the rafters and by the time we finished I felt like crying. Lila was bouncing off the walls. We’d only found half of what we needed, and the produce was abysmal, which means I’ll need to make another trip out Monday after work. And the prices had gone up. A lot. The biggest thing I came home with was a bad attitude and an even worse headache.

I can’t wait till I only need to run to the grocery store for things like dairy. As a matter of fact, in order to ensure that I can put a lot of good vegetables on my table and in my freezer for next winter, I think I’m willing to stay out well past dark all summer long. Seriously.

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I found a new use for the scrumptious pickled turnips:

And the mummy even agreed that the mommy needed a little edge removal after the day she had yesterday (of which we will not speak because we’re being more careful about work-plaining on blog.

Sure, the vodka may have canceled out the digestive aid effects of the pickled turnips, but we all have to make sacrifices.

Vodka Martini:

Fill shaker 2/3 full with ice.

Pour 2+ shots of a good vodka over ice depending on size of glass . (I did 1 shot because it was Thursday night and who wants to get drunk anymore anyway? Like I said, edge removal. Not stupor inducing.)

Shake and set aside.

Pour a few drops of vermouth into martini glass. Swirl it around and around to coat surface of glass, then pour out any extra into the sink.

Shake vodka one more time. (I’ll usually set my shaker aside for about five minutes, just to let some ice melt into the vodka because I’m a wuss and a lightweight).

Place 2 sticks of pickled turnip in glass.

Pour chilled vodka over turnips.

Sip slowly and feel the spikes retreat back into your brain.

Now watch a movie and then go to bed, but make sure you drink a tall glass of water sometime in between or you might wake up feeling like somebody rolled out a Berber carpet on your tongue.

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The ice still clings to everything it touched and the stories of damage are starting to pile up. At the old house, the neighbor called to let us know that the whole hood and much of that entire region has been without power for almost 24 hours, and that the transformer and most of the power lines are on the ground by our house. I’m sure the basement is taking on water, but we don’t have anything stored down there anymore, so we’re just going to hope for the best and stay away until the weekend if they have the lines cleared up.

Also, one of our big oak trees lost a limb and it landed on our out-back neighbor’s brand new glass top patio table, shattering the glass and spraying it all over the back yard, and bending the table into a 4-legged V. So we’ll be buying a new table and chairs set, as well as paying to have some more tree-trimming done this spring. Thank goodness it didn’t hit their house, and it happened in the winter while everyone was safe and warm inside, not gathered around that table for a summer meal. Phew.

The potential better news is that we may have a buyer for the house—a land contract deal, but they have money to put down and good jobs. We’ll know more next week, but hey, if you’re feeling like you have some extra mojo to spare (I know, I keep begging your mojo, but I know all of those good vibrations have been building up into a wave and the wave is about to hit the shore, and my horoscope this month says this is it…this is the month the house will sell) thanks a bunch for sending some our way.

::sucks in air then apologizes for the really long sentence::

The also good news is that the storm didn’t discourage voters from turning out in record numbers for a primary in Ohio. While standing in line (for an hour) I overheard a vast majority of voters say that they are registered republicans but wanted to cast a democratic ballot. Several asked if they would be able to still vote republican in the general election. Spoilers abound, but that’s the game, right. So many lines get crossed, so many layers to so many issues, it’s all so hard to keep straight on top of the daily to-and-fro. But honestly, this is the first time in my adult life that I’ve felt anything other than deep cynicism. Don’t get me wrong, that’s still there too, but there’s also a vibration of encouragement, of dare I say hope? Well. I don’t know if I hope. Maybe I dream. But I played my part and cast my vote for Barack Obama, then slipped my way up the walk to the house and stayed put and warm for the rest of the night. Went to bed way before the results were in, with higher hopes than perhaps I should have had, but then, I’m seldom in the majority with anything I think or do. Especially in Ohio.

When I got home tonight, after a very long, very busy day at work, I grabbed the camera and skated around the yard to capture a few impressions of the storm.

I sure do look forward to having that barn up so we can get all of our tools and supplies under a roof. It’s a bummer to buy straw, then have the tarp blow away and have it ruined by the rain and ice, no matter how pretty it looks all bedazzled like this. As I walked around I counted more than 20 little piles of crap that need storage, and getting them under cover will certainly get rid of the hillbilly feel our property has taken on since we moved here. Things like chairs, rolls of fencing, extra windows, garden tools, bamboo poles, t-poles, stacks of empty cat litter buckets, hose reels, sleds, a seed spreader (ancient)—just to name a few. Cleaning it up and replacing those piles with plants will make me endlessly happy.

I can almost remember the feeling of this railing on the deck with the hot sun beating down on it, the warm smell of wood and grass and pollen in the air. Walking up from the garden with a warm colander full of beans and cherry tomatoes, maybe a wart-covered yellow crookneck and a stack of neat lettuce leaves and arugula balanced precariously on top, my bare feet slapping where those icy foot prints wait. The kids love to run up these two steps, across the deck, back down the other steps by the back door and then around to do it again. And again. Chasing, laughing, picking up dust and wearing themselves into a stupor that only a popsicle in the shade, swinging in the hammock, can cure.

I’m encouraged to remember that the spring is coming, that the ice may slow it down, but if I also slow down, come down out of my busy mind to look closely I can see that it’s best to just trust that the earth knows better what must come next—that she hasn’t forgotten. The sun is higher in the sky, maybe not high enough to melt this prismatic glaze, but high enough to awaken the senses and pull me out of my long winter slumber.

But not quite yet. Just a little more cold and shadow, just enough to make me bend into it so I can see what’s waiting.

* Steven Wright

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I don’t think I’ve ever been a very good listener, particularly with new people. My brain always has one ear turned to how it can latch on to some detail and then noodle it in a thousand ways, waiting for that inevitable pause into which I can thrust my own related (hopefully) thoughts. I doubt anybody I’ve met at a social gathering has walked away thinking, now that Kelly, she’s a really good listener. But I’m pretty sure more people than I (and they) care to recall have walked away knowing useless bits of my history like the time I waited on Judd Nelson, or the time the entire wait staff stampeded one another in the mad rush to get outside to pick Kate Hepburn up off of the sidewalk. Or that Fire Stix Jolly Ranchers and Mountain Dew were my favorite foods when I was 12. And that I was in labor with child the first for a month week.

I think I’m sick of myself. I wonder how people reinvent themselves? Do they start with something on the outside? Because I’m thinking that could be kind of fun. Would my thus far unsatisfied fascination with knit skirts and Frye boots be a step in the right direction?

Maybe if I feel absolutely confident in my body and convinced of myself I can learn how to be with people in a more genuine and present way. People like you. And you. And yes, definitely you. To learn how to not rush into connections in a bluster of me, to not just puncture a vein and spurt the story all over you in a river of images and feelings with no reference, no history. Hi, I’m Kelly and I’m a talkaholic. Maybe I can worry less that while you’re talking to me, my facial expressions are running away with themselves and revealing my inner insecure me. Is it weird that I want to discover the earnest listener inside of me? The one who hears all of the little details and instead of constructing her own story out of those pieces, stores them away as the pixels that redraw you in blooming color in her mind’s eye when you’re no longer there. I want to be the one who sits easy in her chair with soft arms and hands, eyebrows low and relaxed, mouth soft, not waiting or wanting for anything. Just being with you. Being easy with you.

But here…this is her counterpart, with arms crossed tensely across her belly. She’s not angry or holding or trying to block you out, she’s just trying to hide that protuberant tummy so her eyes don’t stray to it every five seconds. She hasn’t felt comfortable in her own skin for a bunch of years and she knows that fact creates a wall that not much passes through, not all the way. Maybe she worries there’s not enough room in there for you both. Even still, yes, she is listening—and no, not only so she can tell you what your storytelling has triggered inside of her own speeding mind. Though, as I think we’ve established…there is that.

When I first started blogging at Baggage Carousel back in 1998, it was for the love of stories—to be part of this burgeoning world of words and pictures, slices of past, present and future that people were sharing. I can’t believe it’s even true, but I feel like I’ve run out of stories, or have come up against the wall that has that sign on it that says: Do Not Enter. Or maybe it says: Enter At Your Own Risk. But there’s no disclaimer to indicate just what the risk might be and I don’t do well with that kind of uncertainty. All I know for certain is that I feel frustrated because I’m not expressing myself the way I want to anymore.

I love garden blogging and writing about food and my misadventures in the kitchen and in the soil. I don’t want to write much about the kids anymore because it just doesn’t feel like my story to tell and there are only so many ways I can be self-referential while recounting their escapades. And these things are only a part of me, not the whole of me and dammit all, it was a very long winter with no gardening whatsoever. I got in a serious rut with my cooking (pizza, pasta, beef stew, pizza, chicken soup, stir-fry, curry, grilled cheese, pizza, pasta, chicken soup, pizza). Hell, we even had frozen fish sticks one night. Yuck. I’m also in a rut with my writing—not just on the blog, but all across the spectrum. I guess I’m just burned out and so I’m looking at ways I can shake things up without walking away because I don’t want to not blog. I just want to find my way back to the stories.

I’m thinking about the reason I titled my blog Her Able Hands in the first place — because I was buried in my novel (no, I haven’t touched it in the last year) that I had given a working title Able Hands and because I was doing a lot of cooking and handwork and raising kids and noticing that my hands were always working on something and how good that felt. I was looking for a new outlet online because I was so tired of the baggage that went along with the first blog. Now here I am again with old stories looking for a new framework, knowing that I don’t want to go changing the whole damblam thing again. So stay tuned, I’m cooking up a little project that I’ll announce in another day or two, as soon as I can get a decent photo to go with it, and I sincerely hope you’ll all participate. That’s right…you. And you. And yes, you too.

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