Musings on Passover 2014

I found myself in tears the other day, in the crowded kosher supermarket, over a jar of cherry preserves.  Growing up, we bought a jar of Polaner's red cherry preserves (the other brands never tasted the same) every Passover.  What was left in the bottom of the jar at the end of the week usually remained uneaten, only to crystallize into unpleasant white icicles within a few weeks after the end of Passover.

This jar of sugary sweet mess was a favorite taste I shared with my mother and sister for many years as a Passover breakfast.  There is no explaining why that particular brand and flavor, not available, nor even desired, at other times of the year, was so incredibly delicious with cream cheese on matzo.

I bought those cherry preserves.  Though the past few years have found us experimenting with new traditions at Passover, this is one tradition that I won't change.   Not a creamy food lover, I'll spread my matzo like always, with a translucently thin film of Temp Tee cream cheese, then top it with the preserves.  For better or worse, I'll be back at the round white, vinyl tablecloth covered for Passover, kitchen table of my youth. Kodachrome.

Winter Musings - It's Time to Move On

We are snow covered once again here in DC and encased in another veil of frigid polar air.  I am not a fan of severe cold, really who is, but I am probably less tolerant than most.  I want to hole up in a cocoon of blankets and fleece and drink cup after cup of tea.  Going any further afield than my front walk and driveway that need some occasional attention with a shovel, requires substantial effort on my part.

The upside to the cold and snow is that my burrowing yesterday left me with time to take care of what we used to call paperwork (which now is primarily computer work), reservations that needed to be made, forms that needed to be filled out and calls that needed to be made.  And, I had plenty of time left to let my thoughts meander a little.  I spent some time on my current project which is to figure out a new career path for myself.  Then, I found myself in the Galilee with Maddy, where she is currently volunteering at an organic and sustainable goat farm known for its cheeses as well as a quirky and lovely rustic restaurant.

Not to sound overly sappy, but it is immensely fulfilling to see my kids growing into the adults they want to be, maybe even were meant to be, the kernels of which have actually been apparent for years.  To see the boy who adored blocks pursuing architecture or the little girl who wrote her own story of Gwenhwyfar choosing to study English in the UK is so utterly perfect and fascinating and so essentially "them".  Where this will take them is an exciting unknown, but that is what they love.  They are becoming these people who, while influenced by Paul and me and our tastes and interests, are going their own ways and following their own paths and interests, maybe riffing a little off of what we've shared.

The hardest job we have as parents, I am coming to see, is not the diaper changes or plugging the outlets or making sure they are neither bullied nor bully or making sure they are happy.  At least for me, it is letting go of them and allowing them to make some really sucky choices amidst their sound, and sometimes even genius, choices and letting them flounder or fail and learn from the experience.  And trying to trust that I've been at least partially successful in helping them acquire the skills necessary for adulthood more often than freaking out that I haven't been.  Many phases of parenting have seemed overwhelming at the time, both physically and emotionally, but this phase is asking of me something well outside my comfort zone of control and planning. Thankfully, most of the physical work is now behind us, but the temperance and restraint which is now required is as unnatural and challenging to me as going out in the frigid cold.

Amidst this phase of letting go of them and watching them evolve and find their way, I am also trying to figure out my own next step, this time, for real, moving back out into the working world in some way.  This new path, I hope, will take me deeper into some manner of helping others have access to, cook and eat healthy foods.  So, when I realize that both kids have an interest in healthy food and cooking, I'm hopeful that maybe I can reproduce this petri dish outside my home.

I love that they are each connected to food in ways unique and appropriate for them.  I'm astonished that Maddy was drawn to experiment with the earth in the context of organic goat cheeses, and that Ted built a barbecue on his patio and experimented with cooking everything from meats and vegetables to pizza on it.  Before she left, Maddy was both exploring blogs and creating her own vegetarian and vegan recipes of all sorts.  Ted spent a semester in Italy with almost as much focus on the local food and wine available as on the art and architecture.

They do not only follow my lead with their food choices but stretch beyond, experimenting with their own tastes and taking me along with them to places I might not have explored otherwise.  They might not realize quite how much pleasure I take in this.  Indeed, I'm not even sure how either would respond to this knowledge as I don't think either is exploring food to forge a connection to me or to seek my approval, nor should they. So there I am on Maddy's Israeli hillside, away from this cold, seated on Turkish carpets on an outdoor patio, eating a meal of goat cheese and labne and salads made with vegetables grown on that land.

Fall Musings

                                                                                              Photo: Jan Pappalardo  


This has been an unusual fall in many ways.  We've had a few cold days here in the DC area, but not consistently.  Last Saturday morning we woke up in nearby West Virginia to a very brisk 28 degrees.  Nonetheless, we explored Charles Town and shopped at their small, but wonderfully stocked farmer's market, enjoying some warming and free (!) coffee from a local roaster, gathering supplies for an impromptu picnic of cheese, bread, guacamole and chips, and happening upon the most delicious thin green beans of which I bought enough for a dinner during the week as well as some to blanch and individually quick freeze.

On Sunday, when we returned, I quickly started cooking and made the hummus from the cookbook Jerusalem as well as some pumpkin bread, using my basic banana oat bread recipe, substituting pumpkin puree and pumpkin pie spice for the banana and cinnamon.  I also added a splash of maple syrup.  I kept the oven going for a while, roasting some eggplant to eat with the hummus.  The warm oven gently reheated the chilly house, and we drank tea and relaxed and I started planning some pureed butternut squash soup that never did materialize.  Or rather, I ran out of steam in the late afternoon and never made the soup.

By mid week, however, thoughts of soup couldn't have been further from my mind as the weather warmed up again to the mid sixties, with an overlay of warm, humid air reminiscent of late spring and not at all evocative of November, even in DC.  Halloween eve, itself, was warm and a little rainy, which I don't remember happening for years.  Earlier that day, I had just noticed the array of colors finally painted across the tree tops while walking in the park.  Yellow, orange, rust, red, and the merlot color of some of the maples.  

As I was leaving the house the next morning in the pouring rain, I noticed that the deluge had washed most of the leaves on the street under Maddy's car and covered the drainage sluice along the curb, stopping up the rain water rushing down the hill, and cascading a wall of water about three feet high over the tail end of her car and onto the sidewalk.  Although I was already late for an appointment, I felt compelled to redirect the flow.  So, in my raincoat with hood on (at least the hood on looks better.  Maddy says that I look like a turtle with the hood hanging down my back), armed with an ancient wooden handled golf club that Teddy bought at the Next to New Sale for $1 and that we inexplicably leave in the umbrella stand by the front door, I went out and scooped and "chipped" the leaves out of the way of the drainage area.  Once I had the water flowing steadily down the street, I then tried to clear beneath the back of the car just a little, until I realized that Maddy was still asleep in bed and was probably not going anywhere in the car for hours.  

Yesterday, we were lucky enough to be invited out to Sycamore Island for some canoeing on the Potomac in the late afternoon, on what we figured might be the last warm day.  It turned a little windy, but the colors and the light as the sun dropped were breathtaking.  Paul and I have a little work to do on rowing in the same boat, but we did pretty well once we got out of the shallow, rocky area.  I did not grow up with canoes, as Paul did, and my more recent, limited experience on the water has been in single person kayaks where there is no need to communicate with anyone else to maneuver.  

And now, as I write this at the new 8 am after changing the clocks, I feel a chill in my toes and nose and I can tell that the weather has changed again.  Maybe tonight I will make that butternut squash soup.