On the ground with the White Horse.

Last week The Garners posted about G.K. Chesterton's Ballad of the White Horse, which caused me to dig out my cassette tapes of the author reading his own poem -- how thrilling! Too bad they were made from a scratchy recording so that it's very hard to appreciate the poem itself. Still, the directness of the connection to the very voice and person of the poet mean a lot to me.

What made me interested in the Ballad in the first place was taking a trip to Britain with daughter Pippin nine years ago. We both very much wanted to see White Horse Hill in Uffington while we were there, and we found it quite empty of any other humans the day we visited. We hiked up the hill to the chalk art that is thought to be 2,000 to 3,000 years old, and wandered around the horse's anatomy. We couldn't pull ourselves away. I just could not get over -- here it is again -- the earthy material link to ancient peoples and the mysteries of their culture and history.

One thing we share with the ancient people who carved the trenches of this design is human nature, the gifts of the Creator who made us in His image, glorious even in a tarnished condition. The horse reveals the creative aspect of that image, and Chesterton's ballad shows his own artistry while it tells a human and Christian tale set in King Alfred's day. The imagery in this stanza, which I think pertinent to the Lenten season, illuminates another aspect of our humanity that we share with our ancestors: the impulse to stand before God in worship, fighting with the desire to be God:

Pride juggles with her toppling towers,

They strike the sun and cease,

But the firm feet of humility

They grip the ground like trees.  

                       -G.K. Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse

Thinking again about this world history and my history, I want to revisit the horse vicariously, by means of the poem slightly more removed from the poet than my old cassettes. So I just ordered this edition of the book, which I think is the one I bought two copies of in the past for gifts. The American Chesterton Society will be sending me this CD, read by Aidan Mackey, who sounds as though he is very likely, once I put that disk in the player, to send me right back to England and White Horse Hill.

Linking up to Weekends With Chesterton

Yet farther on my road today.

My lights and bows are still up - and the tree.

The bright season of the Feast of the Nativity of our Lord is only in its sixth day, but already we need to make room in our minds for thoughts of transition, closing out one calendar year and opening a new one.

Before I go there, I need to be done with all the Christmas cookies, at least on this blog. Last night we Glads were off to another party, and I took the tins out of the freezer again and loaded up a plate to take along, but that still didn't use them all up.

I made ten different kinds of cookies this year, including five new ones. Next year I may share some of those recipes, but for now, on to other things!




Like reporting on last week's doings: We had three different groupings of family celebrations in two different locations. Sunday before Christmas we went to church with Pippin and family; this is Ivy in the foyer. I took the photo from behind so I could show her pigtails.

 

And next to a lamp made of popsicle sticks, a bunch of uncles and nephews playing a game, something they always make time for when getting together after a few months.





One of the trees that had been cut on federal land in Trinity County had been decorated with antique spice tins. I thought you would like that.










 






Back at our place, Liam got a lesson in Christmas tree appreciation and gentleness. He was a good student.



















  





I found this pretty piano ornament at Pottery Barn when they were having a special deal, and I gave one to each of several pretty pianists in the family.

Some of my own favorite presents were these books I'll be reading in the new year, given by four different people who scanned my Amazon list and surprised me with titles I had wished for and forgotten. Kind people.

I feel the Old Year rushing away, and the New coming fast at me, never mind that I'm not "ready." Sickness right before Christmas pushed some duties ahead to After Christmas, and what might have been a purely R&R&R (the last R for Rejoicing) Sixth Day of Christmas will be interrupted by the Computer Guy coming to help with our computer, a machine so rude as to take our attention off the holiness of the days we are in.

As I am in a liturgical church, the service yesterday gloriously confirmed the present-ness of the holy day that is so cosmologically momentous as to need at least twelve days to properly keep it. The carol-singing we did last night also kept me planted firmly in the Feast, so that for an hour or two I didn't have to think about the onrushing year of 2014. 

Some lines of poetry from Christina Rossetti helped me when I took a few minutes to think. The last lines were the most applicable to my heart's comfortable place, reiterating what I come back to again and again, the knowledge that whatever comes, today or in the coming year God means it for our salvation.

New Year met me somewhat sad:
Old Year leaves me tired,
Stripped of favourite things I had
Baulked of much desired:
Yet farther on my road to-day
God willing, farther on my way.

New Year coming on apace
What have you to give me?
Bring you scathe, or bring you grace,
Face me with an honest face;
You shall not deceive me:
Be it good or ill, be it what you will,
It needs shall help me on my road,
My rugged way to heaven, please God.

The rest of this poem can be found here. Whether or not you are the type of person who needs a lot of down time to process the meaning of the days of Christmas and the New Year, I pray you will find help to progress on your road to heaven. May God strengthen us all!

not a single place dark or unhappy

We have been ill around our house, and could not get going on the Christmas tree project until this week. Now we managed to get it up and decorated.

I cut off our homemade wood-shaving angel in the picture so I'm showing a close-up in the next. Mr. Glad did nearly all the tree-trimming this time, after he went all by himself to get the tree, a Noble Fir grown in Oregon.

Anna wrote last week about various Advent and Christmas trees she has known, and it made me want to remember some trees of the past. Her post includes a photograph of a large and dramatic Christmas tree in Norway.



I don't have anything that old, but at right is a picture of me in a red sweater in front of a 1950's tree. And at the bottom of the page, a little tree that the sister in the photograph gave me more recently. I like best to have birds and fruit and pine cones on my tree, and I never did like tinsel.

The boy at left (our Soldier, now grown) is posing by a tree from a minimalist era, when a friend let us cut from his property a wild and untamed specimen, on which we don't appear to have strung lights. But how strange and exciting for young children to have a tree in the house for a while, even undecorated.

Below, this year's tree before trimming, to go with a sweet poem e.e. cummings wrote.

little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower

who found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see i will comfort you
because you smell so sweetly

i will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would,
only don’t be afraid

look the spangles
that sleep all the year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,

put up your little arms
and i’ll give them all to you to hold
every finger shall have its ring
and there won’t be a single place dark or unhappy

then when you're quite dressed
you’ll stand in the window for everyone to see
and how they’ll stare!
oh but you’ll be very proud

and my little sister and i will take hands
and looking up at our beautiful tree
we’ll dance and sing
“Noel Noel”

Fuyu and Spy Lessons

Northern Spy

Early in November Mr. Glad and I made a visit to our favorite apple farm. (This previous post introduced the topic and those orchards.) We were having company for dinner that week, and for the occasion I baked a pie with some Northern Spy apples, but didn't like it. The fruit was juicy enough, but seeming to lack some zip, so that my pie was actually overly sweet and blah.

When I heard the next morning that son Pathfinder was going to be in town long enough to have dessert with us, I immediately thought to make another pie with my favorite Pippins. It was a success in every way.

Pippin pie

We'd also included some Rome Beauty apples in the boxful we bought. I stewed chunks of all three of these varieties together and stashed them in the freezer. After Christmas I plan to eat them for dessert with a lemon custard sauce. As for the Spy apples still in the box, they make great eating out of hand.

Romes and Pippins

During Advent, ideally I would forgo projects like concocting the vegan desserts that fit with my church's Nativity fast, because one of the blessings of fasting is the extra time that is freed up if you are eating more simply and not fussing over recipes.

But this year we are hosting weekly church history classes at our house, and after the study session people like to stay to chat and nibble. When I brought the persimmons home from the monastery it was with the thought that perhaps I could make something with them to serve on these occasions.

O.K., I admit that it was also because I wanted to have some of that beautiful and cute fruit in my house. If you slice them crosswise you see that they are beautiful inside as well. Very Christian, this fruit.

I used a recipe for Vegan Peanut Butter Apple Bars, from Tasty Kitchen, the area of Pioneer Woman's blog that features reader-submitted recipes. I switched out the apples for persimmons, and because persimmons don't have the tart component that apples do, I decreased the amount of sugar in every layer. The crust is like a peanut butter cookie, which appealed to me.

They were tasty alright, and everyone liked them, but it seemed to me a case of the whole not being equal to the sum of its parts. I liked all the layers better before they went together.

The original recipe also called for a good amount of cinnamon, which I replaced with some cardamom, and that perhaps wasn't spicy enough to compensate for the blandness of the fruit. Maybe the Fuyu persimmons are best fresh, or dried into fruit leather. Or adored for their loveliness.

Lavender Baby goes home.

Back in August I posted this picture of yummy fabric I had bought to use sewing the Waldorf doll I wanted to give to granddaughter Ivy for her first birthday at the end of September.

I managed to do it! As it was my first time assembling this kind of head and body and sewing a face, I decided to make two dolls so as to get extra practice. I was so glad I did, because very quickly it became obvious that two very different little dollie girls were taking shape.

It wasn't just that one had brown hair and one had yellow. The expressions on their faces and even the shape of the heads gave them different personalities.

I knew early on that I liked the brown-haired dollie much better than her blond friend. The blonde  -- I hate to say it -- looked like the neighborhood girl no one wants to play with.

Why was that? My friend Crafty agreed that she wasn't very likeable, but she thought I should try to fix her. So when I was up at the cabin in early September I tried to brighten her up a bit.

Both her eyes and her mouth were problematic. I guess I had learned how hard it is to make short and precise stitches in such a way that they form at least vaguely even features, when the instructions are to use only two stitches per feature. The mouth looked pinched, and the eyes squinty.

Before

Not only the position of the features and the meagerness of them were unappealing, but the color was lacking. The eyes were pale blue, the mouth pale pink, and as I had already sewn a light color of hair on her head, the total effect was washed out.

On a rainy afternoon up there in the mountains I set to work, and added bright aqua embroidery thread to her eyes, and darker pink to her mouth. After just a couple more stitches in these more intense tones, her disposition and her IQ improved dramatically.

After

Her jaw is still a bit too prominent, shall we say, but maybe that will not be too bad when she gets her hood on. I'm just happy that she is calmer and more agreeable. I still haven't finished Blondie, because I knew I wanted to give the sweeter baby to Ivy.

The thrill of seeing the two dollies come almost to life was not something I expected. Immediately I had the urge to start forming a new creature right away, just to find out what sort of character he or she might turn out be. Other things have taken my attention and prevented me, but my materials are at the ready whenever I find the block of time to take the next first step.

In the meantime, I finished the brown-haired lass up with a lavender suit, and posed her all over the house and yard in hopes of getting some good pictures to show you.

I was surprised at how much Bag there is to a Baggy Doll. The drawings in the book from which I got the pattern somehow don't convey the pillow-like quality of the doll's body, a shape they say toddlers love.

I pinked the edges of some fleecy fabric to make the first layer of "wrapping," and then put her in a final layer of blue flannel that could also serve as a doll blanket in the future if the children get into the business of playing house and wrapping up dolls or stuffed animals.

They might not...they are outdoorsy kids whose own mother never cared much for dolls. But the dolly whom I now call Lavender Baby won't mind if she sits on the sidelines or in a corner of the crib. Her hood and all her wool stuffing will keep her warm, and she lives in a house full of love and joy, to which she has already contributed just by being her happy and cuddly self.

Little Ivy didn't waste any time getting familiar with her new doll and flopped her around contentedly.

The wind blows warm.

The wind has been blowing balmy air into and around the house these days, but I've enjoyed some cool walks in the early mornings. Somehow this year the autumn atmosphere is calling me outdoors and I'm actually hearing, feeling the pull. I want to soak up whatever it is in the air while I can, before I get all wimpy and chilly all the time and just want to sit by the fire.

On the subject of fires, this warm wind has fanned the flames of a wildfire in one of our favorite nearby parks -- eek! Mr. Glad and I saw the smoke from our front yard where we were working on the lawn and flower bed. Thank God, it was put out fairly quickly and burned less than 200 acres, of vegetation only.

In preparation for the controlled indoor fires I'm anticipating, my husband and I had just finished moving a half cord of firewood from our driveway, to stack in the side yard. My own method of carrying wood involves loading several pieces on my left arm, which was bare on this warm day, and right off was getting a bit roughed up.

I dug around in the rag drawer and contrived an arm protector from a section of worn-out sock. I'm showing you two pictures so you will be sure to see how clever I am.

Two logs loaded on....

Mr. Glad showed me a concave piece of bark that fell off a knobby oak log, and we admired the design of its inner side, one bit of art work that must be representative of gazillions of other lovely bark designs that no one ever sees. Then I made it our computer desktop background. 

I've had to interrupt my outdoor reveries to cook up some of the bounteous harvest. Old friends hosted a women's potluck and that offered me the chance to try out a new cake on the other ladies.

When I defrosted the freezer last week I had found various flours that I want to use up, and Mr. C. dropped off a bag of Golden Delicious apples, so I tried this buckwheat apple cake. Everyone loved it, and took home what was left over, except for the slice I saved for Mr. Glad.


The recipe calls for so many apples (six), that they completely solve the problem of buckwheat being a dry sort of flour. It was not overly sweet, and would be a good sort of cake for people who like to eat cake often. I used limoncello instead of the maraschino liqueur. I don't understand how the cake on the original blog came out so pale. It's as though the cook used refined buckwheat flour, which I've never heard of.

For the potluck lunch I also made a big bowl of tabouli, my method long ago adapted from a Sunset Magazine recipe called Bulgur Salad. Next summer I'll share it. I was able to use parsley, mint, and tomatoes from our garden. I forgot to take a picture until after I'd stirred in some tuna to make half of the batch into a main dish salad for Mr. Glad.

Back out in the garden again, I've been deeply digging to break up the clay for planting some ranunculus bulbs and pansies where a shrub used to be. Some of its big roots were still hanging around and for the first time in my life I used a chopping maul to get them out of there. That was satisfying work.

One of the jobs on my autumn to-do list was to take out the Cécile Brunner rose in the far corner of the yard. This picture shows it four years ago, before it became a burden that is more trouble than it is worth.

I never thought I would say that about such a lovely rose bush, but this one is so vigorous, and vigorously invading three neighbors' yards, that it requires hours of pruning three times a year, from which I come away scratched and bleeding, and wishing I could have done something else with the time. The bush is in a place where we don't even properly appreciate its enthusiastic blooming.

I forgot that it likes to bloom in October, until my glance landed in its corner yesterday. It won't do to whack it down in its glory, so I'll have to wait a couple of weeks before I tackle the job. I will sadly remove one more rosebush from my life, trying to live with the reality of my limitations. In the meantime, I cut some stems to make one last bouquet.

I tweak the pudding.

Mine is like the 4th from the top, only dirtier.

In the first decade of my married life my primary cooking teachers were Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker, in the 1964 edition of Joy of Cooking. That was long before this age when one can find overwhelming amounts of information about any food or recipe at the click of a mouse, and before we watched "Julie and Julia" and found out that the cookbook my mother had given me for a wedding present was suspect.
 
The women who published the book in various forms beginning in the 30's were not the same sort of cooks as those we know today, we who have the likes of Julia Child and M.F.K. Fisher to inspire us. Irma was grieving the loss of her husband in 1930 when she followed the advice of others and got busy making a book out of her collection of recipes that had been gathered to teach a class in the 20's.

Irma S. Rombauer

Marion wrote a biographical sketch of her mother, in which she admits that her mother was not known for her great cooking. To which I add, it really was not the era for that. Many of the households that had the resources to spend on a variety of ingredients had hired help to cook for them, which I noticed early on was the case with the Rombauers, because in my copy they mention conversationally, and give a recipe for, the matchless poultry dressing their cook made. The kitchen help, expert as they might be, would not be in a position to publish cookbooks, so as Marion reasoned, "cookbook writing is too important to be left to the cooks."

But for women who were increasingly responsible for preparing meals for their own families, and who had time and means to study and learn from books, the Rombauer women did a good service. I like what Christopher Kimball wrote for the Amazon.com listing of the book, about Irma's "amateur but highly evolved enthusiasm." After all this revisiting I plan to get a copy of the latest revision and see how it has changed, now that Irma's descendants are bringing to it their own flair and abilities. On the Joy website I found a likeable personal tone and appetizing recipes, but the cooks don't give away all of the book's recipes online.

The Rombauer/Becker Family marked their own favorite recipes in the edition I own with the name "Cockaigne" after the name of their summer home, and that label served me as online reader reviews do nowadays, helping me know that at least a few people really liked that particular casserole or cake or whatever.

While my little children played nearby or took their naps, in the days before I could be distracted by reading or writing blog posts, I sat at the kitchen table and pored over Joy, making a list of all the "Cockaigne" recipes that appealed to me. The only one I remember now without looking it up, perhaps the only thing I tried more than once, was Tomato Pudding Cockaigne.

Kate shows fruit from yesteryear's garden.

On a recent blog post somewhere I read mention of Scalloped Tomatoes, and I found online many recipes for that dish, which seemed to resemble the tomato pudding I hadn't made in 20 years. It was labeled as Southern Cooking on many websites. Do all of you southern ladies make scalloped tomatoes?

At first it sounded like the perfect way to use up some of my fresh tomatoes, and perhaps also in the winter, to use some of the bags full that I have been freezing. Except that there seemed to be more bread and sugar than I care to consume in the various versions....eventually I gave up looking at them and went back to my old recipe, which I discovered also calls for quite a bit of sugar -- six tablespoons to go with 14 tomatoes -- but why? These are garden-ripe, sweet tomatoes I'm bringing in by the bowlful.

Joy's recipe also didn't have enough basil for me, and included no garlic. It called for only a small quantity of bread crumbs, and I hoped that if I added a larger quantity of bread the juice would be soaked up faster and the dish might take only two hours instead of three to cook down.

So...here you have it,

Gretchen's California Tomato Pudding

14 fresh ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded, sliced

1/3 cup fresh chopped basil leaves

2 tablespoons fresh chopped parsley

1 extra-large clove garlic. minced

1 1/2 tablespoons brown sugar

2 cups fresh sourdough bread crumbs

6 tablespoons melted (salted) butter

Put the tomatoes in a pan on the stovetop, and heat to the boiling point. Stir in the herbs, garlic, and sugar. Cover the bottom of a 9x12 baking dish with the bread, and pour the melted butter over it. Ladle the tomato mixture on top of the crumbs, and bake uncovered at 350° for about an hour and 15 minutes, or until it is no longer watery. Serve warm.

While my pudding was in the oven I typed out the above, and waited to see if  the finished product would be worthy of sharing. Oh my, yes, it is delectable and so hard to stop eating. I guess my husband and I ate about five tomatoes worth each.

I could further tweak a few things, make it a couple more times to assure consistency and give you a more thorough report, but this is only a blog after all, so I will just say that I'm pretty sure it would be just as good with a little less butter and sugar. I imagine it tasting great made with olive oil, if you prefer vegan fare. But Mr. Glad said, "Whatever you did to make it like this, it was perfect."