The Goodness of Summer

Summer is good. It begins with promise and concludes with the next stage of fall. The tulips have disappeared and the tomatoes are ripe. Last summer was hot and dry while this summer is cool and pleasant. That’s the story of the marvels of the natural world of summer. We have had no sinkholes, no washout floods, and no tornadoes this summer.

Summers have brought changes into my life. This summer I have been settling into my new house after leaving the condo where I lived for ten years. It is the first time in my life when I moved alone. When I bought the house in March, a foot of snow was on the ground. When I moved into it during the Memorial Day weekend two months later, the grass was green, spring flowers were blooming, and children were running through the neighborhood. Very good.

On the first day in my new home it dawned on me that most of the rooms do not have ceiling lights. I had a few lamps and quickly bought more. One bedroom continues to be lit by an artist’s clamp light attached to a bookcase. Other events at home included new draperies and curtains, the flooded basement (due to rain) that kept carpet wet for a month, repairs to the leak in the kitchen sink, and new carpet for the living room and hall. I am sure that more is to come. Old houses are not perfect.

Other summers have produced changes. Here is one. My parents had a cottage at Clark’s Lake in the woods of Door County while my brothers and I were growing up. We lived in it all summer in 1951 instead of spending time there and at our year round home. We were beginning a new adventure. We moved to Sturgeon Bay and my father started a new radio station. The cottage was home until the parents found a house to live in when September came. For me it was a good summer of swimming in the lake, walking in the woods, swatting mosquitoes and living in a cottage without plumbing. That summer my life changed as I enrolled in a new school in a smaller community than the one we left in suburban Chicago, and I made new friends. More happened after that, but it wasn’t summer any more.

Another memorable summer with change was my wedding and new life with Rick. My mother and I spent the month of June preparing for the wedding, then the big day came, and after it was over, Rick and I went off to Milwaukee to live after a honeymoon in New Orleans. Our small apartment in Milwaukee was near a park. I went to the park often because we had no yard, and I pushed the neighborhood kids on the swings. This new married life was the biggest change of my life so far. My maternal grandmother and her sister were living in Milwaukee at that time, which was a plus. I have always loved my family.  It was a good but different kind of summer that ended with my resuming my education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

I enjoy scavenging berries and apples each summer. Last summer’s drought diminished the harvest considerably. This year I found few raspberries and blackberries, and the apple harvest is just beginning. I have gone to Washington Island twice this summer and had a trip to Savannah, Georgia, at about moving time. I planted bushes, flowers, tomatoes and zucchini in my small yard. The neighbors are friendly. The yard has been populated by young rabbits, squirrels and chipmunks. Summer is good.

Blackberries Again

The wild blackberry season continues. With rain yesterday and this morning, plenty of newly ripe berries are on the bushes. That’s right. I was out there picking again. Since the blackberry pie is gone, I looked for another interesting way to eat blackberries.

Yesterday’s batch of berries went into a dessert I found in a cookbook and modified due to quantity, substitute thickener due to not stocking arrowroot, and my jellybag being jettisoned about twenty years ago. I discovered this new way to use blackberries in Rodale’s Basic Natural Foods Cookbook, edited by Charles Gerras (New York, MJF Books, 1984). I made it yesterday while it was raining. When it rains for a long time in summer, it’s time to cook.

I found the dessert as presented not sweet enough even for my not so sweet standards, so when eating it, I stirred a small amount of additional sugar into it. That made it quite palatable. This morning I tried a new way to improve it. I stirred what was left first and then folded some Cool Whip topping into it, which made it very good. I don’t know about its keeping qualities, since I ate it on the spot. I noticed that a small amount was enough to satisfy me. I don't stand behind Cook Whip as a nutritious product, but used it anyway.

Don’t get excited about the jellybag part. A satisfactory result comes with straining the cooked berries with a colander, and then sending the resulting juice through a finer strainer to get rid of the seeds that made it through the colander. If you want pure, uncloudy juice, find your jellybag. It’s not difficult to make this, especially if you have time on your hands.

Crimson Classic
(including my revisions)

2 cups fresh red fruit (I used blackberries)
1 ¾ cups water
1/3 cup honey
2 ½ tablespoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Combine fruit and water in a stainless steel or enameled 2 or 3 quart saucepan. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer for 20 minutes. Strain juice through a muslin cloth or bag, or use a colander and strainer. Combine honey and cornstarch with a small amount of cooled berry juice. Gradually add juice, stirring to combine. Cook over low heat until thickened and clear, stirring almost constantly. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. Pour into a bowl and chill. Serve with whipped cream or whipped topping.

Tomorrow I’ll think of another way to eat blackberries. I’m not ready to make jelly yet.

Blackberries

It’s wild blackberry season. Not everywhere, but where I walk. Every day I see hundreds of them. I can’t pick them all. Fortunately, other people have been picking them, too. So much abundance! I have been picking blackberries for several days. Today I shared some with my neighbor Liz.

There’s nothing quite like the sweet shot of berry flavor in my mouth when I toss a half dozen in. The walk stops and the picking begins. The sun warms the berries and they are delicious. Front teeth chewing only, please, or the seeds will occupy all the barely accessible spaces throughout the back teeth.

Daughters Dori and Mary were here for the weekend, so Dori and I went berry picking Sunday morning. We came back with enough to make a pie, plus plenty more. She makes wonderful pies. She used the standard piecrust instructions from Better Homes and Gardens, along with the recipe for blueberry pie on the Kraft Minute Tapioca box. As she said, blueberry is close enough. And it was.

Blueberry Pie Using Blackberries

4 cups fruit
¼ cup Minute tapioca
1 cup sugar

Mix fruit, tapioca, and sugar in bowl. Let stand 15 minutes. Line a 9-inch pie plate with pie crust. Fill with fruit mixture. Dot with 1 tablespoon butter. Cover with top crust. Seal and flute edge. Cut several slits in crust. Bake in preheated 400 degree oven 45 to 50 minutes or until juices form bubbles that burst slowly. Cool.

Thanks to Minute Tapioca for printing the recipe on the box.

A Walk on the Hills

Yesterday I had a breezy enjoyable walk along the Military Ridge State Trail, starting in Verona. It’s a good flat former rail bed, so one can walk for a long time without a lot of exertion. Today it was the hilly walk from home to and through the Prairie Ridge Conservation Area. Yesterday the constant breeze modified the effects of the humidity. Today there was no noticeable wind. I thought I had started out early enough to avoid the perspiratory (I think I just invented a word!) (sweaty?) effects of the humidity. No such luck. It was an enjoyable walk anyway.

The way to it goes up the hill on Raymond Road, past the Channel 3 property, left on Muirfield Road and into the little park on the hill. The grass trail behind it then goes through the hilly terrain. The illegal burn there in the spring probably helped the prairie flowers and grasses. They look and smell wonderful.

Walking outside the urban buildup is restorative to the soul. Remember the 23rd Psalm, “He restoreth my soul.” The colorful, abundantly alive country spaces remind us that we don’t own ourselves or the environments we inhabit. When we use them, we can enjoy a little bit of heaven while God restores us.

A Walk in the Prairie

It’s July on the prairie. It’s beautiful. At Governor Nelson State Park the blanket of white, yellow and purple flowers among the green grasses is beautiful. A walk through it is like a walk through heaven. The work of prairie restoration looks like a great success.

It was a great day in the state park. I had the unusual opportunity of observing a pair of sandhill cranes among the grasses from about forty feet away. They didn’t fly away. One sat down among the grasses and became invisible to me. The other ignored me. I loved it.

The beach on Lake Mendota was populated by plenty of children with their accompanying adults. The lake draws kids. A few people were working on their tans.

The weather was perfect, somewhere near eighty degrees. It was mostly cloudy. The humidity was just high enough to bring up the scents of the grasses and flowers. The wild black raspberries were just ripening. I ate a few, without pondering the question of legality of picking anything in a state park. That’s the only time the mosquitoes appeared. Were they guarding the raspberries, or just lurking there in the shade?

With 4th of July fireworks expected tonight, I prefer the prairie.

Island Report

I am vacationing at Washington Island. It’s great to be able to stay as long as I want to. The weather has been warm with occasional clouds. Somewhat like life. The lake water is several inches higher than it has been for several years, almost up to the shore. Some of us remember where the shore ought to be. Thanks to Gordon’s North Star Realty for the photo of the cottage.

I arrived Friday in time to take myself out for fish at Karly’s. I greeted Tim on behalf of Eddy. I visited with Ray and Barbara Hansen after finishing my dinner, and met one of their sons. Until now I had met only Dan. One thing about Washington Island is that everyone knows everyone.

Saturday I mowed the lawn. The grass was a foot high over the plumbing mound. I wished that Danny had mowed it last weekend when he was here. The old push power mower isn’t very efficient in high grass. It also gives new meaning to the words Heavy Metal. I’m not very efficient in tall grass, either. I am thinking that I should get a weed whacker for some not very level areas.

Sunday I went to the Lutheran Church and then had lunch with Phyllis Ellefson and Peg Sullivan at K.K. Fiske. Phyllis and Peg eat lunch every Sunday and invited me to come with them. The sermon was a Powerpoint report on the parish’s trip to New Orleans, where the attendees helped build houses with Habitat for Humanity. Those people who sweat here when it gets up to eighty degrees were very hot there where it was in the nineties and very humid.

Sunday afternoon I visited the Art and Nature Center, viewed the annual art exhibit, and visited with Laura Waldron, who told me about her daughter’s eating disorder. Their list of programs for kids isn’t created yet.

Of course I have been walking. The daisies, columbine, orange and yellow hawkweed and buttercups are blooming. A few wild strawberries are ready to eat, but most aren’t ripe yet. Spring came late this year. I found two stalks of wild asparagus. That seems to be late also. The poison ivy is doing well. The insects are thriving, also, especially the mosquitoes. Four deer were observed today.

Tonight Bread and Water, the restaurant across the road from Mann’s Store, is having a Thai dinner, and I plan to take part. They had one last Monday and ran out of food, so their suggestion is to get there early.

That’s Washington Island, a very enjoyable and talkative place. I have decided to return home Wednesday instead of Tuesday. Sometime soon I will report on my six day bus trip to South Dakota, which was earlier in June.

Another Walk in the Park

Yesterday the Ice Age Trail. Today Elver Park. It’s a great time to be walking, with seventy-degree temperatures.

Elver Park has beautiful blossoms at this time of year. The flowering crabs are finished, as are the invasive garlic mustard blossoms that promise many more in the future. The black raspberry blossoms are turning into baby berries. Other blossoms have taken their turn.

Today Elver Park has two floral experiences. The park has two hills of woods separated by a lower grassy area that contains recreational spaces. At this time of year the interesting parts of the park are in the woods. Each side is different. As I walked through the woods at the north end, I found more wild geraniums than one could ever hope to see scattered through the shady pathway. It was very beautiful.

Coming out onto the grass, I looked across at the south hillside and saw a spectacular white or off-white expanse of flowering locust trees, all facing north. Lots of tall mature locust trees, going up the hillside. This hillside provides wonderful views of fall color later in the year for people who drive by on McKenna Boulevard. Today they can see the flowers.

The irony is that when I was walking up the trail on that hill, I couldn’t see any of the locust blossoms. They were all high above my head in the ceiling of greenery that is the woods.

There is plenty to enjoy on the ground, too. The bursting of green life that is everywhere except under the shady tall pines is reassuring that our planet is still regenerating itself even in our parks, with some help from the Almighty.

On the Patio Slab

Now that it is June, we are finally having weather that sends us outside. Yesterday I walked six miles on the Military Ridge State Trail. This afternoon I spent an hour sitting on the slab that the condo builders decreed was sufficient as an outdoor space. No humidity-induced discomfort, few insects, a bit of breeze. A cloudy day provided little sunshine. Very good.

I watched the gophers and chipmunks scampering among the boulders of their in-ground condo that hold up the terrain between our condo buildings. A few gopher holes are near my patio, so we are providing underground housing for the new generation. Rabbits live in our yard, as do birds.

While I was enjoying the local wildlife, I was looking through one of my four editions of The Joy of Cooking. Today’s selection, a revision of the 1931 edition, was published in 1952. In 1952 people cooked with real food. The real food included a section about many kinds of sauces made with real ingredients, and a small selection of sauces made from canned ingredients. I decided to try an orange sauce on the chicken I planned to have tonight. This part of the chapter went on to present recipes for fruits with meats. I must admit that I haven’t spent my life trying apples stuffed with sauerkraut, baked cranberries made with fresh cranberries, fried bananas, or boiled kumquats.

Then I looked at salads. It began with a commentary about a scene in a medieval play, and a quote from Willa Cather’s Death Comes to the Archbishop, both about salad, but more about salad culture than about how to make salad. Author Rombauer lamented the acceptance of “ready-made salad dressing.” After a page and a half of commentary, she got to the business of making salad. Some of us remember commercial salad dressings even in 1952.

There is a lot more in The Joy of Cooking, and it has changed over the years. I still love the old cookbooks. Somehow the activity of small rodents and the fun of reading an old cookbook went together on the patio. Rachael Ray, eat your heart out.