Best's Ever

Ithaca called.  Heat wave #5 was in full swing (#6 is on the horizon) and so getting out of town seemed like the best thing ever this past weekend.  Long story short:  air conditioning in my place is pretty much non-existent.   I should work on that.  Add it to the list.

I headed up to my Mom’s place just north of Ithaca, NY where temps were forecasted to be a lovely 10 degrees cooler than here… and to boot, gorges and lakes offer chill zones you just can’t get around here so much.  I had a lovely time – probably spent too much money down on The Commons and at the farmer’s market (to give you an idea, one of my purchases was a bench for goodness’ sake…) but that is all part of the fun.

I also put some money down on blueberries.  Money well spent…  Mom and I picked over 11 lbs of blueberries at Glenhaven Farm just outside of Trumansburg (http://www.glenhavenfarm.com/).  Mom’s bucket was heavier by not quite a pound... it turns out that I was fairly busy stuffing my face while she was definitely more focused on the bucket.  We’ve picked there for years (me a little more sporadically) and the blueberries are outstanding.  We picked a lot. It was decidedly hot (low 90’s, but keep in mind that was still 10 degrees cooler than eastern PA where the asphalt was melting) and we worked up a sweat, but really the bushes were so loaded that it didn’t take all that long and a quick trip to Lodi Point State Park after - where we floated our toes to the sky in Seneca Lake - cooled us right off. 

 

Now, as you may remember from previous posts, my baking skills are on the skimped on side of the gene pool coin.  I can bake a cookie and I'm working on the bread, but pie crusts are something I typically get out of a box.  Mom just whips them up like nothing and in doing so this trip, has inspired me to try it again.  I’m not sure why I’ve had so much trouble because oh my gosh, she abused that dough… it was a warm day and she just threw ingredients into the bowl, stirred it all up, overworked the dough, didn’t chill it, rolled it out, and voila:  it came out beautifully.  She did nearly everything you aren’t supposed to do to the dough and it still came out great.   I decided that I could do that.  Gimme the recipe for that magical pie crust.   And so I give to you:  Blueberry Peach Pie with the Pie Crust that can’t be stopped.

Best Ever Pie Crust    Now, here for years and years I’ve seen this recipe and Mom has given it to me a few times in an effort to spread the wealth, but I really don’t think I’ve used it up to now…  I always thought she just called it the Best Ever pie crust because it was good – and it is – but the reality is that it is adapted from a recipe from Best’s Fruit Farm in Hackettstown NJ.  Ah ha!  Gotta’ love the play on words.     Here it is:

4 C Flour

1 Tsp. salt

1 Tbls. sugar

1 ¾ C Crisco

½ C Water

1 Tbs. Vinegar/or Lime Juice/or Lemon Juice (my aversion to vinegar inspired the fruit juices and they work just as well)

1 Egg

Mix all dry ingredients and cut in Crisco until it is all pretty homogenized and with the Crisco in little bits.  Per Mom….  “You can work this part to death” and she is right.  Little bits the size of peas?  No way.  Just work the crap out of it. Then add wet ingredients that have all been mixed together so that the egg is completely beaten into the water.   Bring this all together and it will still probably be a little soft but not sticking to things.  At this point, I believe the original recipe says to chill it, but Mom sure didn’t and when I got home and tried it in the confines of my own kitchen, I didn’t either.  It came out great both times.  I had to add a little more flour to mine as it was pretty humid out and the Crisco may have been melting in the heat, but again…  I feel like you can abuse this dough pretty hard and you’ll still be just fine.

Roll it out and plunk it in your pie pan (this will make 4 nicely thin crusts for the experts of you out there or 3 if you’d like to not worry about getting holes in your dough for the boxed crust ilk out there like me).  Either way, it makes plenty for 2 pies with crusty tops, too.

My Favorite:  Blueberry-Peach Pie

Assemble the crust as above (or, you know…  keep the Crisco clumps and chill and don’t handle much, blah blah blah)…  Into this crust add the following filling:

Mix together well (preferably in the pie crust bowl so you have one less dish to do):

4 C blueberries

2-3 nice sized peaches all pealed and chunked up

4 T (or slightly less) flour

3 T brown sugar

½ tsp. cinnamon

Juice of half a lemon

Dab a few dollops of butter on top if you are feeling it…  if you don’t, it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference, but it does add a nice added level of flavor complexity.  Top it with more crust however you may see fit:  cookie cut out shapes, or lattice, or if you are like me, just fold over the excess bottom crust dough or take the lattice strips and just strew them over the pie.  My Mom enjoys the lattice, and I do as well, but I’m not quite that patient with it. I find the more rustic versions just as tasty.  Brush the top crust with milk or water and sprinkle with sanding sugar or regular sugar to add to the festiveness.

Cook pie mid oven for 15 minutes at 425° F and then 350° F for 45 minutes or until the fruit is all bubbly and the top crust is lightly browned.

Voila. Best Ever.

Silver Linings

I don’t know how many heat waves we’ve already had here in Philly this year, but I will say that it is flat out too many.  Since my arrival from the great white north, I have been sitting here on my couch - or more likely camp chair propped low on my wood floor - sweating my ass off.  If my ass were really disappearing I might find some benefit to the heat, but alas, it is just a metaphor and I’m just sweaty.  Last night around 10:30 I huffed a big sigh, got my tent out, and set it up in the back yard.  Sleeping with the crickets and J-sweeping fireflies was a whole lot more appealing than sleeping in my stuffy bedroom.  By morning, I needed a blanket.  Brilliant!  (I’m still patting myself on the back for that one).  Nothing like a change of scenery to breeze out the cobwebs because, I must say, the re-entry into Philly weather was quite harsh this time around.  I went from needing 2 wool blankets to sweating to death.  Not good.  Praise to the tent.

The heat, happy me, is breaking, and for some reason, I’ve been in the mood for celery.  Tonight was the night for both.   In the case of celery, it was the power of suggestion… I was listening to Molly Wizenberg’s (with Matthew Amster-Burton – sorry Matthew – Molly gets first cred with me) podcast Spilled Milk during one of my last trips and she was talking about braising (admittedly, it was an old one…  my podcast world revolves around plane-trips or road-trips as a rule).  The idea of braised celery stuck in my brain.  I stopped by the grocery store this evening after work and got fixin’s for both braised celery and home-made ice cream.  An interesting combination, I know, but rest assured, I did not eat them both at the same time.  To get things rolling, I started my kitchen time with a blueberry mojito in hand - fresh with Jersey blueberries and mint from my garden.  My chicken-grilling ushered in a blast of wind and about 5 big drops of rain.  Clouds parted, dinner was eaten, fresh strawberry ice cream was made (makes for a much nicer picture than the braised celery) and the gibbous moon plays hide and seek illuminating the silver lining of the bank of clouds.  All told, a damn fine evening.

Here is my version of

Braised Celery

I highly recommend a revisit to this veg. – something really great about rediscovering an ingredient you hardly ever think about.  Celery for me means stuffing, and stir fries, and the holy trinity, and mirepoix.  A side dish on its own?  Anathema no more.  Zip zip comfort food on the plate in minutes.

7 stalks of celery cut into 1 inch lengths

½ Vidalia onion (or other sweet onion) rough chopped

1 Tbsp. butter

½ C chicken stock

Sauté celery and onions for about 5 minutes in the butter (medium heat so the butter doesn’t burn – you can use olive oil, but it changes everything…  even the chemistry of the veggies… so you may have to cook longer and add a bit of salt if you go with oil).  Add the chicken stock and cover, simmering veggies for about 10 minutes.  The liquid will most likely be mostly gone by the end of 10 minutes, but if not, pull off the lid and reduce until the liquid becomes a glaze and maybe take it a little further so as to caramelize the celery onion combo just a smidge.  Tonight, I didn’t even have to add any salt, but give it a taste and salt if needed.

I served it on a bed of mixed greens with herb-marinated grilled chicken and it was great.  I found myself really wishing I had a grilled peach with the whole meal, though.  Can be a great side-dish for all kinds of bold tasting mains.  I have not done it yet, but imagine some chopped fennel would be a great addition to the celery and onions.  Yum.  Go crazy.

Daisies and Deluges

Doing fieldwork in remote places allows for plenty of opportunity to sit in the truck and contemplate your navel or whatever else happens to breeze through the brain.  Zoning out is easy to do in the back seat of a truck moving at 70 mph for 2-3 hours at a time.  We drive 4-6 hours round trip when we work in the field and so we have some long full days of work bookmarked with long drives.  It is a good skill to be able to zen out with the green passing by the windows.  This morning, I’ve been doing some flower thinking.  Canola is planted here in great swaths that turn blazingly yellow this time of year with their vibrancy accentuated by the deep blue of the water-vapor-free sky.  Wildflowers are blooming now all along the roadsides.  Rosa rugosa, fireweed, some sort of Queen Anne’s Lace, a bright purple spiky thing, a soft mauve carpet.  The drive is colorful.  The weed inspector came to Meanook yesterday and chastised the station for having a field of daisies…   Sigh….  They seem so benign….   They will be all mowed down in the next day or so. 

Facing East: Meanook

We do so much driving that we have a rule that the copilot is required to stay awake…   Their job is to pay attention to the wildlife along the road to help keep us safe.  This makes it difficult to completely zone out, but it does keep you from sleeping your life away.  This morning we passed at least 6 different groups of deer, several redtails, an osprey, a flotilla of swans, fuzzy goslings, baby chicks.  Our last trip yielded two bear.  The coyote which used to be so abundant here along the roads are few and far between this year.  I’m not sure why.  Perhaps the wolves are moving further out of the mountains…   More things to contemplate.

That little blurb was two days ago… it seems very difficult to find the time this trip to chat about much of anything.…  today, I am tied to Meanook under a low cloud ceiling, occasional torrential downpours, and loud lightning rumbles and booms.  It is a good day to be inside and that is where I stay.  It has been off and on raining for a few days now – at least in the afternoon and evening – and something about that has unleashed an onslaught of mosquitoes.  Not just the normal massive beasts that cast shadows as they pass by, but also some wee little dexterous buggers that flit in and get you stealthily.  At least the big ones fly like lumbering bombers making them easily detectable.  These little ones pack a punch.  I was getting eaten through my big fat and fuzzy Smart-Wools.  That’s just rude.

And so home is on the horizon.  I welcome it with open arms and many cuts and bruises and bites.  I am looking forward to seeing what my garden has done in my absence…   I am guessing there may be club zucchini in my future.  I’ll take it.

Independence Day

I’m vegging out here in the perfectly fine daylight at Meanook.  It is 7:30 ish and the sun won’t set for another three hours, and then not get dark for another 2…. gotta' love summer in Alberta.   A Phoebe has returned to the nest that was build several years ago.  It is just outside one of our outside doors under a porch roof, and this year they have adorned the nest with moss which is a new building material for them… it looks so appealingly comfy.  It is a beautiful thing with a base layer of muddy texture topped off with bright green soft moss and cottony white fluff which not only lines the nest, but also flies through the air like snow in the breeze.  Kitten – the 12-year-old resident tiger cat -- is just outside hunting squirrels is my guess;  they are making an angry ruckus while the feline stalks low.  Typically, it is either bunnies or moles/voles that get caught up in the jowls – though the occasional squirrel does bite the big one.  Kitten is quite the hunter.

We’ve been working a bit on the burned site – Utikuma  – we received NSF money to revamp it a bit….   In doing so, we have been setting up all new plots to look at N cycling (tied with a little C).  It has been a busy several days but it is nice to see some of the vascular plants making a come-back.  Amidst the sooty spots, there are happy cloud berries pushing their way through with vibrant greens to contrast the dominant drabs and blacks.  We’ve all returned to the field station covered with soot.  No one mentions the big dark splotchy smears all over my face (and entire body for that matter), and I don’t mention them on theirs in return.  I get into the shower and the water runs a dark sooty grey for several minutes.  Remember Bert from Mary Poppins?  Uh huh… that’s the image….  Soap is wayyy necessary.   It is quite the show, I’m sure, to see us all stumble out of the trucks covered in black while at the same time most assuredly smelling like the big mammals we are. 

Canada day has come and gone and now our Independence Day is fast on its heels.  I believe we will be spending a chunk of it here at the station working on getting more equipment ready and doing a bit more training.  This I am happy for.  I think the weariness is sinking in again.  I’ve barely had time to think - no less communicate with the outside world.  Hopefully with more and more crossed off the lists, things will get a smidgen less chaotic.  Fingers crossed!!  Perhaps with the new day a campfire and some festiveness will ensue… the fire ban has been lifted.   Our “American” group is the biggest one here at the moment which is nice… things are quiet here and I like that quite a bit.  There is enough going on with the research to make having a quiet stay much appreciated.

And so I will settle in with my cold Guinness and the sunshine and the happy birds and noisy squirrels and hope for the Aurora Borealis to show up one of these nights.   Enjoy your 4^th wherever you may be.