on the brink

Can any­thing so destruc­tive, so dis­rup­tive, so poten­tial­ly dis­as­trous as a hur­ri­cane real­ly be head­ed to this love­ly place?

Yes.

We are inland, and up on a bit of a hill, so being washed away isn’t a wor­ry.  But we are sur­round­ed by enor­mous old maple trees.  If a tree falls on you and there’s no one across the road to wit­ness it, do you make a sound?

All we can do, we’ve done.  The pantry is full of canned toma­toes, pas­ta, and chick­en broth.  Chick­peas, tuna in olive oil, may­on­naise.  The fridge is full of creamy vichys­soise, every kind of cheese you can imag­ine, bacon, and what my broth­er-in-law Joel calls “Con­necti­cut’s dis­as­ter French toast shop­ping list”: milk, eggs and bread.  The freez­er is full, and John says when the pow­er goes out, we’ll decide on menus based on how quick­ly its con­tents seem to be degrad­ing.  “Tonight it’s ribs and Mint Ore­os, pota­to pan­cakes and butter!”

John’s found a kerosene lamp that his par­ents gave him years ago for Christ­mas, more as a designy thing than as a nec­es­sary source of light. But now, one trip to the hard­ware store lat­er for oil, it’s ready to help out.

Kon­nie and Mark have come to retrieve their hors­es from their home in our back mead­ow, to walk them up the road to their sta­ble to wait out the storm.  We’ll miss the sound of their snort­ing and the vision of their tails wav­ing in the sum­mer air.

I actu­al­ly think the storm wait­ed until John’s mom went home to hit, so that she retains her hap­py mem­o­ries of Red Gate Farm.  We had our last-blast seafood sup­per the night before she went, since Avery had gone off to Rhode Island to vis­it a friend and this depar­ture had opened up our menu choic­es!  An appe­tiz­er of del­i­cate­ly fried soft-shell crabs and squid…

And then the main course of lus­cious steamed lob­sters with a gar­licky mayonnaise.

As deli­cious as these were, I actu­al­ly think the tri­umph of the Avery­less meals we enjoyed was:

Crust­less Crab Tart with Goat Cheese and Fresh Thyme

(serves 6 as a main course)

1 tbsp butter

1 bunch scal­lions, thin­ly sliced

1 pound fresh white crabmeat

8 ounces goat cheese, crumbled

1 tbsp fresh thyme leaves

1 pint heavy cream

6 eggs

fresh ground black pep­per and sea salt to taste

This tart was crust­less by acci­dent!  I approached the cook­ing of din­ner far too late to make pas­try, and my moth­er-in-law con­vinced me that we could sim­ply put all the fill­ings into a cheese­cake tin with a remov­able bot­tom.  So we did.

But­ter the bot­tom and sides of the spring­form pan.  Scat­ter the scal­lions on the bot­tom.  Scat­ter the lob­ster and the goat cheese and thyme leaves over the scallions.

Beat togeth­er the cream and eggs and mix in the pep­per and salt.  Pour over the oth­er ingre­di­ents in the tin.

Bake at 300F/160C for 20 min­utes, then turn heat up to 350F/180C for a fur­ther 40–45 min­utes.  Watch care­ful­ly and take out just as soon as the fill­ing in the cen­ter stops wob­bling when touched light­ly.  Cool slight­ly or com­plete­ly before serv­ing.  This tart was even bet­ter very cold next day, but it need­ed a bit of extra sea­son­ing.  Serve it with a crisp, bit­ter arugu­la sal­ad and a cou­ple of sweet tomatoes.

Lus­cious!  We toyed with the idea that a bit of lemon juice added to the crab­meat might be a nice thing.  Try it and tell me.

Then it was good­bye to Non­na who went back to Iowa, and good­bye to Jes­samy who went back to Man­hat­tan.  How we miss them both.

I just love Jes­samy’s scream­ing face in this pho­to, and obliv­i­ous John’s mom, heart­less­ly play­ing Vir­tu­al Scrabble!

The only con­so­la­tion for John’s mom’s depar­ture was that two hours lat­er, we picked Avery up in Bridge­port after her Rhode Island adven­tures.  “I’m not so much tired as SORE,” she said with a slight­ly sun­tanned face, telling of body­surf­ing in the Atlantic and bik­ing every­where.  It’s a bit pathet­ic how hap­py we were to have her back.  Some­times love can be expressed only through cook­ing, and so it was the work of a moment to chop lots of things very small to pro­duce a per­fect pot of bolog­nese sauce.

Per­fect Bolog­nese Sauce

(serves 6 with spaghetti)

1 tbsp olive oil

4 cloves gar­lic, minced

1 white onion, minced

3 stalks cel­ery, minced

3 medi­um car­rots, minced

2 large mush­rooms, minced

1 1/2 pounds ground meat of your choice: bison, beef, veal, pork, lamb (or all!)

1/2 cup white wine

1/2 cup whole milk

1 large can peeled plum tomatoes

pinch ground nutmeg

1/2 cup grat­ed parme­san or Romano

fresh black pep­per and sea salt to taste

Heat the oil in a large saucepan with a heavy bot­tom and add the veg­eta­bles, cook until soft­ened.  Add meat.  Cook until just cooked through, stir­ring fre­quent­ly to break up the meat.  Add the white wine and turn up the heat.  Stir and cook for five min­utes.  Add the milk, still with heat high.  Stir and cook for five min­utes.  Add the toma­toes, break­ing them up with your hands as you do so.  Turn down the heat and cook for at least 1 hour, stir­ring occa­sion­al­ly.  Short­ly before serv­ing, add nut­meg and cheese and stir thor­ough­ly.  Sea­son to taste.  Serve with spaghet­ti or mashed pota­toes, with plen­ty of extra grat­ed cheese to sprinkle.

*************

Any left­overs of this sauce must be placed in a but­tered bak­ing dish, topped with mashed pota­toes, and a sprin­kling of grat­ed cheese, and baked for 45 min­utes.  HEAV­EN­LY.  Of course in Eng­land this is known as shep­herd’s pie if the meat was lamb, and cot­tage pie if the meat was beef.  Is it “rancher’s pie” if it’s bison?  “Pig­man’s pie” does­n’t sound very appetizing.

Rol­lie’s stopped by for his month­ly chat to keep John informed as to the prices of var­i­ous farm imple­ments and to chat with Anne about whose land is being parceled up and there­fore needs to be pres­sured to sell it to the Land Trust for preservation.

We’ve made our last trip to KMart for what is meant to be a love­ly gift for my cher­ished Mel­rose School bell­ringers, but because of the drat­ted Hur­ri­cane Irene, our last and much-antic­i­pat­ed prac­tice on Sun­day has been can­celled.  I’m dev­as­tat­ed!  The present will have to wait until I return at Christ­mas­time.  As many a pious bell­ringer before me has intoned, “Man pro­pos­es, and God dis­pos­es… What can­not be cured must be endured.”  Small con­so­la­tion when I did SO want to see them all one more time.

Tomor­row will see us at our beloved Lau­rel Din­er for one final cho­les­terol-laden break­fast of sun­ny-side up eggs, corned-beef hash and hashed-brown potatoes.

There is no place like the Lau­rel, no place on earth.  Their but­ter comes from heaven.

 There are two short-order chefs at the Lau­rel, and I think they are twins.  One is port­ly and jol­ly (this one), the oth­er is slen­der and seri­ous.  The port­ly chap is lav­ish with but­ter and your hashed-browns come in a ran­dom pile of onion-laced bliss.  If the slen­der chef is on duty, just ENOUGH but­ter to cook your food is employed AND every­thing is com­plete­ly straight and sym­met­ri­cal on your plate.  I am sure that he, like Her­cule Poirot, would be hap­pi­est if some­one would invent a square egg.

How quick­ly things change.  Ear­li­er this week — on the day of that CRAZY East Coast earth­quake, in fact — the sky was a sur­re­al, impos­si­ble blue.  We took a long, long walk along the mead­ows where we snow­shoe in winter.

This ear­ly evening, as I sit on my ter­race, the clouds are rolling in.  The rain is meant to begin tomorrow.

And because our lives nev­er seem to con­tain just one sort of dra­ma, the approach­ing hur­ri­cane today had to take a back seat to the demo­li­tion of our liv­ing room to repair all the dam­age from the ice dams this win­ter.  This was the love­ly room before.  You can just see traces of mold and rot.

Two work­ers with face masks (why did­n’t WE get face masks?) and six hours lat­er, here’s what’s been left behind.

It is sim­ply beau­ti­ful!  The bad news is that what we took to be a sheetrock wall and there­fore expend­able turned out to be a 200-year-old plas­ter wall and ter­ri­bly inter­est­ing!  And to think we’ve been liv­ing with­out any sort of insu­la­tion all these years.  No won­der the ener­gy bills were painful­ly high.  My friend Tri­cia reports that when they restored her farm­house up the road, they dis­cov­ered that the walls were insu­lat­ed with corn cobs!

Avery has tak­en the most beau­ti­ful pho­tographs of the laths.  It is won­der­ful­ly evoca­tive to see walls made out of TREES.

We all three of us hate to see nasty fiber­glas insu­la­tion blown in behind these beau­ties, and the whole lot cov­ered with more plas­ter.  And the real­i­ty is we won’t: we’ll be back in Lon­don while the work is going on.  But we’ll always feel a lit­tle sad that we could­n’t keep the laths exposed and turn Red Gate Farm into a sort of log cabin.

The air holds an eerie calm tonight.  All day long the news­cast­ers and may­ors and gov­er­nors have been wip­ing their brows and warn­ing every­one not to be com­pla­cent just because today is such an impos­si­bly beau­ti­ful day.  What could go wrong?

We’ll awake tomor­row to anoth­er day of demo­li­tion, an after­noon of approach­ing storm, an evening of poten­tial dev­as­ta­tion.  But Avery’s hydrangea tree will still be in bloom, and we’ll persevere.