Fruitcake Weather

       

    It was Fruitcake Weather last week—dark and cloudy, cool and damp—just right for baking something dark and mysterious, with ancient scents of  spices and brandy. I always remember Truman Capote’s story of baking fruitcakes with his slightly odd aunt when I begin ours, for the process is still complicated and takes at least four days.

 Day One: Procurement.

The first step requires a visit to the liquor store for soaking brandy and orange liquors, which feels a little weird. We’re not big drinkers here—very different childhood issues with alcohol still ripple through our lives—and the store is cold and drafty, and still smells lightly of cigarettes. After I have procured the spirits, I have to buy the fruits. I trek to the co-op with the long list and my trusty tin two-cup measure. No glowing, falsely colored mystery fruits here. Four cups of walnuts, two cups of dates and figs….I measure and Mark writes down the bulk bin numbers. Four cups of brown sugar and a pound of butter later, we leave. All of the ingredients hang in a bag in the back hall, waiting for step two…

Day Two: Chopping

I used to chop everything by hand, but then I experimented with the Cuisinart. If you chop equal proportions of nuts and fruit, with a little flour tossed in (take it away from the recipe), most fruits will chop loudly, but neatly, in the machine. I have to hold it down as it attempts to walk across the counter, but that’s faster than hand chopping. Mark and the cats hide from the noise. Dates and raisins can go into the batter whole. Once the chopping is done, we zest the lemons and oranges with our handy dandy zester, add all of the spices and brandy, and soak the mass overnight in a huge yellow bowl. The marvelous scent has begun. Real Fruitcake smells Medieval, or like Charles Dickens and the Christmas Carol.

Day Three: Baking

The next night, after dinner, I bake the cakes. First I mix the butter and sugar, eggs and vanilla, in the KitchenAide mixer, adding flour after everything is well creamed. Then, I dump the soaked fruit into my biggest container—a commercial sized stockpot that was once used to cook pasta at Anthony’s Restaurant in Portsmouth New Hampshire—and mix the batter in by hand. It’s the only way to do it. I am over wrist, almost to elbow in batter, folding the mixture together, breathing in allspice and lemon, brany and plums, butter and sugar. Heaven. Once mixed, I plop the batter into the nine small loaf pans lined with waxed paper waiting on the table. Batter is everywhere. We taste. The pans rest in the oven and bake.  When they come out, I pour more brandy over them.

Day Four: Wrapping

            On the last day, I knock the loaves out of pans and wrap them up, firmly, in waxed paper and tinfoil. I want them to breathe, but not too much. We nibble on the crumbs. Then, I stack the loaves in the larder to mellow and wait for Christmas time and distribution.

Dark Fruitcake—from Fannie Farmer

3 cups of raisins

1 cup of currants

2 cups of apricots

2 cups of figs

1 cup of prunes

1 cup of dates

4 cups of walnuts

2 cups of pecans

the zest of three oranges and three lemons

.5 cup of candied ginger

2 t cinnamon

1 t allspice

1 t mace

.5 t cloves

1 cup of molasses

1 cup of brandy

.5 cup of orange liqueur

Chop all of the fruits and nuts. Mix everything together in a huge bowl. Rest overnight

1 pound of butter

3 cups of brown sugar

8 eggs

1 T vanilla

Cream together until fluffy.

4 cups of flour

1 T BP

1 t BS

1.5 t salt

Mix together and add to butter and sugar. Mix everything. Place in pans. Bake 275 degree oven until just done.  Soak with brandy and store.

Eat with cream cheese until Twelfth Night.

Sunday Night Suppers-- November

Potato soup, pickled beets, cider

Baked potatoes, broccoli, cider in front of the fire

Roast Delicata squash, baked beans, salad with longkeeper tomatoes, cider

Bold indicates locally sourced food. Local equals within one hundred miles of home.


Roasted Delicata Squash

Turn oven on to 375 degrees.
Slice the squash about a quarter of an inch thick, leaving the skins on.
Spread on a baking sheet.
Cover with two-three tablespoons of olive oil.
Sprinkle with sage, salt, and pepper.
Roast until done. They will be soft and sweet. It takes about 40 minutes.

Corvallis Moments

       

    On Wednesday, I was walking towards downtown. The light on Third Street turned and Kim, on her SoupCycle bike, rode past. SoupCycle is a small local business that delivers handmade organic soup by bike cart. It’s been going for about five years; the soup is tasty and the delivery service is fine. I smiled. Then, another bike and cart rode past. This one was piloted by a homeless man with two huge—six feet in the air and three feet wide-- bags of cans balanced on an old Burley bike cart. I caught up with him on the sidewalk and noticed that he also had a small radio tucked into his belongings and was listening, I swear, to NPR. Only in Corvallis.

            We had another classic Corvallis moment—or hour—on Saturday night. We went for a walk after the Pie Social to settle our stomachs and ran into the Christmas Parade. Corvallis Parades are surreal experiences; I have never seen any others like them and this one was no exception. In the first five minutes we watched: Boy and Girl Scouts, an old fire truck decked in lights, the mayor, the CPD doing figure eights in the street around the police cars, and a belly dance troop. Then I started taking notes. The parade had:

•  Three rounds of Vintage cars
• Corgis in leis
• Veterans for Peace, joined by the Methodist church
• Blue Sky Power
• Four evangelical churches waving from the backs of Big Trucks
• A bad Elvis Impersonator
• The Healthcare for All group, chanting rally calls and dressed in boxes, like presents
• Not one, but two kazoo bands, one of which had altered the kazoos with small traffic cones to increase sound
• Dogs in Hula skirts
• The Nutcracker dancers
• The CHS Dance team (well, half) and Mr Spartan contestants
• Pregnancy Options
• Log Trucks decked in lights and wearing grass skirts. One also had a hand-made sign on the extra gas tank reading “Americanism.”
• Bikes of all sorts, including the Soup Cycle riders and some kinetic sculptures, decked out in lights
• The Rodeo Queen for the Philomath Frolic on horseback
• Benton County Commissioners and our state rep who is running for the Senate seat
• Guide Dogs with Reindeer antlers
• Every police car in town, sirens blaring, followed by Santa riding on a fire truck

The parade runs for over an hour. Everyone tosses candy into the crowd and kids scramble to find it, often running into the street while huge trucks head their way. In the end, the families at the beginning of the route have been known to join in and walk through downtown. It feels like you have moved back in time to the 1950s, when everyone got along and was happy, despite the tensions roiling below the surface.

Winter Fruit and Walnut Pie—slightly altered from the November Sunset Magazine

1 c of craisins

1 c of raisins

2 c of chopped apples

2 T of cornstarch

2 T of butter

Juice of one orange

.5 t cinnamon

.25 t of nutmeg and allspice

.5 c of sugar

1 c of toasted walnut pieces

Put fruit and .75 c of water in a pan and bring to a boil. Turn off and add .25 c of water with the cornstarch mixed in and stir. It will thicken. Add sugar, spices, butter, juice and stir.

Place toasted walnuts in the bottom of the pie and then pour the fruit mix over it. Attach the top crust. Maybe sprinkle some cinnamon sugar on top. Bake. 425 degrees for the first ten minutes, then drop down to 350 degrees to finish it off.

This is also fine for breakfast….

Corvallis Radicals

   

        One of the best things about living in Corvallis is the number of people who are working for change. We have Mr. Eager (yup, Eager), a retired OSU professor whose wife remembers pre-war Germany, who is interested in solar energy. So, they set up a two different systems of the roof of the passive solar house they built in the early nineteen seventies, to test which was more efficient on rainy days. If you visit, you can climb up to a rickety viewing platform to examine the panels closely, then drop down to the garage and see his records. And he’s considered fairly normal around here. Last Sunday, Mark and I hung out with two Corvallis radicals, each working on the local level for global change.

            First, we rode over to Jonathan’s house to see his new rainwater catchment system. Jonathan is so far ahead of the curve, he gives early adopters inspiration. A born tinkerer and engineer, he built a solar bike light a few years back because he could. His house is a model of sustainable living. First, it’s pretty darn small—about seven hundred square feet, with a garden in the back yard. Jonathan was one of the first in town to install light tubes and LEDs, to build a solar electric system to sell energy back to the company, to turn off his answering machine when he came home. He has solar hot water, runs his truck off of solar panels on the garage roof, and just decided to store some rainwater. It’s a cool system. One thousand gallon tank in the front of the house and two one hundred and fifty gallon tanks on the side. The plumbing is fairly straightforward—gutters direct the rain into the tanks-- but he has a leaf catcher and a first flush system so that what lands in the tanks is fairly clean. Then he assembled an aerator to keep the water from growing stagnant. It runs off of a solar panel on the roof and has all of it’s parts in a hand-made wooden box he found at Goodwill. All of the tanks are interconnected, so, as the big one fills, they all fill. And he just added a “leveler”, which is a weight hanging outside of the tanks to indicate water level. They were about a quarter full when we visited. We left feeling both very impressed and way behind the curve.

            The same day, we went out to Sunbow Farm for dinner. Harry, who was one of the founding members of Oregon Tilth and just ended a stint on the Board, is working on GMOs in the Willamette Valley, as well as The Bean and Grain Project, experimenting with what beans and grains will grow here as the climate changes. The talk at dinner was the GMO fight. They are putting forth a ballot measure for Benton County that gives rights to nature and takes way the rights of agricultural corporations. (Check out Benton County for Community Rights  for more info!)   Biologists, and farmers, and writers were all thinking about how and why to ban GMOs locally. Interesting work and dinner conversation.

            At the end of the day, I felt pretty thankful to be living here and now, in the Willamette Valley, in Interesting, and challenging, Times. There is a great deal fundamentally awry in the world, but I am surrounded by people who, rather than despairing, are leading the way in working for change. AND I get to eat dinner with them.

 

 

Deeply Rooted Split Pea Soup

Cook three cups of split peas in eight cups of water for several hours. The crockpot works really well for this!

Coarsely chop and add:

• 2 medium potatoes
• 2 carrots
• 2 parsnips
• 1 onion
• 3 stalks of celery
• half pint jar of roasted tomatoes

Season with: cumin, allspice, salt, pepper, and thyme.

Cook for another hour or so. You could puree it, but I don’t. Eat with sturdy bread and salad. For Days.

            

Oregon Winter Begins

Oregon Winter has begun.

 When the clocks are set back, I walk to school at sunrise and home at sunset. On a good day, the sky glows with fading sunlight; one a bad day, it is cold and rainy, but the air always smells of the ocean forty miles away. Someone has already hung colored Christmas Lights along the eves of the house; they balance out the pumpkins rotting on doorsteps. Seasonal transitions.

I read “Oregon Winter” to the class last week. Heads all nodded at the line “There will be months of rain.” Freshmen dream out the window during Thursday afternoon study hall, remembering warm sunshine on bare legs and long summer dusks. I know, because I am thinking of the same thing. At lunch, a junior puts down his physics homework to ask me if I have ever been to Ollallie Lake and we indulge in half an hour of trail and road talk.  When an absolute downpour passed through last week, we all stopped to watch the rain blowing sideways. The Christmas Cactus is in full bloom and the Swedish Ivy is dropping spent white flower petals on unsuspecting heads. The small white lights that I strung under the plant shelf warm the space—and make it possible to read near the windows on a dark morning. The scent of someone’s poptart lingers in the air. The room feels safe and colorful, if not warm (I have the coldest classroom in the building.).

At home, the house glows against the darkness. I’ve trimmed away the front plant hedge and raked up the fig tree leaves, which opens up the front of the house. The new fence is bright in the fleeting sun; it’s color reflected in the dying asparagus ferns and the hazelnut leaves. As the leaves fall, the catkins are revealed. Chickens and rabbit dash around the backyard when we come home before their bedtime. Pumpkins and squashes are stashed all over the house; the tablecloth has fall leaves and green grapes printed on it; my mother’s orange candleholders grace the mantle. We have a fire in the evening.

The sun is leaving; we bring the light inside and snug down for the winter.

Corn Chowder—total comfort food

Chop and sauté a medium onion in butter and olive oil. A leek is also nice.

Chop and boil until almost done a couple of cups of potatoes.

Add potatoes and potato water to the onions. Add a bag of frozen corn, some salt, pepper, and thyme. Cover with milk. Some days, I add some dried milk to thicken.

Eat with muffins.

Sunday Night Suppers-- October

Broccoli, tomato and potato casserole

Applecake, pickled beets and cucumbers--Potluck Fare

Potato and black bean burrito with salsa verde

Autumn Minstrone and muffins

Pumpkin Spirits

We may all need a little more protection in the coming Winter....this is an old post.     

      Pumpkin Spirits guard our house on the thinnest nights of the year. 

            The first two spirit guards are the big pumpkins, carved with faces. We light them in the house and carry them out  the  front door. We walk around the house—North, East, South, West, through two gates, asking the spirits to protect the space for the winter. Mark places his in front of the dining room door; it is a face made from leaves this year. I carry mine to the front steps; a huge smile and a third eye watch the night.  Gaurdian Spirits.

            The second  two  are carved gourds from Sunbow farm, with thick skins. The designs are simpler—triangles and slits let the light through. These leave via the back door and  round the house as well. As I walk, I remember all of the fruits of the gardens—grapes, raspberries, flowers, figs, tomatoes, greens—and we place these in the back veg garden. Mark’s is on the bridge, mine under the collard patch where the rabbit likes to hide. Garden Spirits.

            The third spirit gourds are actually two votive holders of pumpkin faces that have been in the family for years. I gave my mother one for her birthday when I was twenty years old; I just liked the smile. We carry these small figures out of the dining room and around the house, still heading clockwise. One sits on the potting bench; the other watches from the thick wooden plank in front of the fireplace. They look towards the house, leading spirits in. I tuck my mother’s glass pumpkin into the strawberry plants at the feet of Saint Francis. Guiding Spirits.

            At night, before we climb into bed, I look outside. Small golden lights gleam in the darkness.

Cornbread—the ideal potluck food

We had a potluck last weekend and I am always paranoid that there will not be enough food, so I make cornbread. This doubles nicely.

1 cup cornmeal

1 cup white flour

.25 c of white sugar

1 T baking powder

1 t salt

1 egg

.25 c of oil

.75 cup of milk

handful of berries

Mix dry together. Mix wet together. Mix the two and throw the berries in. Bake in a 350 0ven until done using the toothpick test.