Blogger on the Road

This week finds me out of New York and back onto the wild country roads of my youth.  I grew up in the country, not far from a small town in southwestern Missouri.  It’s been a couple of years since I’ve been back and the best part about it is that very little changes while I’m gone.  The pace of country life is so much different from the city.  People and activities are slowed down…way down, and it’s the perfect place to come for a much needed getaway.

Brian and I have been planning a vacation for quite some time.  Our lives have become increasingly hectic over the past six months, seemingly more so than in years past.  Being that it’s Memorial Day weekend, visiting the family seemed like a perfect way to kick off our vacation and slip into the unwind mode of “country time”. 

Memorial Day is what some would call the unofficial start of summer, me included, and the weather is certainly cooperating with that theory.  It’s hot, humid and sunny here in the Midwest with a nice breeze blowing through the grasses and the freshly cut hay.  It smells so darn fresh here!  My parents live way out in the country and are surrounded by farmland.  It’s not uncommon to see cattle grazing in the fields around their home, hear coyotes howling at night and is the best place I know to hear a symphony of crickets as you drift off to sleep.  It’s hard not to like this place as an adult.

When I was growing up I always wanted to get away.  I felt the need to get to the next bigger, happening place.  Happily I managed to make my way to New York City and realized that though I love the city dearly, I definitely have the country in my heart.  As an adult, I have fantasized many a day about living in a cabin in the woods, being left alone by the world and never having to deal with pesky commercial clients ever again.  It would be my own personal Walden where my baking empire would begin and I could still be connected to the rest of the world through the Internet.  Just Brian and I could live off the land with a small but fruitful garden and me canning or putting away all the food for when the harsh winter comes.  All right, so this all sounds a bit Laura Ingalls Wilder-ish, but it’s a decent fantasy for those busy city days when frustration seems to be the only thing holding as a constant. 

I don’t get away often enough, and I certainly don’t get to see my family as much as I would like, but I certainly do appreciate the time I have when I do get to Missouri.  Since it is Memorial Day weekend and a vacation, we decided to get out and see a place in the Ozark Mountains I haven’t been to:  Dogwood Canyon.  I thought I'd seen all the attractions this area of the country had to offer, but apparently there was a treasure waiting for me to come and find.  My mom suggested that we go and check it out because it’s a beautiful and fairly unpublicized place full of waterfalls and rock bridges, the sort of things I like to take pictures of.

Dogwood Canyon is a huge nature preserve, a couple thousand acres in fact, which was made open to the public in the late 90’s by John L. Morris, the same man that owns Bass Pro Shops.  They offer cabins to stay in, hiking and biking trails, classes in fly fishing and the most simple activity for a city boy:  a two hour guided tram ride.  We were able to see all of the park’s most beautiful spots while casually being pulled along in a trailer.  Led by an elderly Ozark-ian gentleman full of homespun tales and humor, we enjoyed not only waterfalls but also the animals. 

The drive takes you through several miles of woods and then crosses the border into Arkansas.  The smell of the forest is something I genuinely miss.  There is a certain deep, earthy and leafy smell that I only find when I’m far away from a city.  It’s a freshness seeping from the woods that awakens something profoundly primal and spiritual.  Once out of the woods and into Arkansas we went up the mountainside and down into a broad grassy valley where there were longhorns, bison and elk just hanging out waiting to be fed.  I couldn’t believe how close we were able to get to them, and with no protection I might add.  The animals seemed pretty domesticated no doubt from the multiple tours that come through each day, but it was still a little surprising to see them so up close and personal.  We had a really fun day.

Once we got home, it was time to make this week’s dessert:  Strawberry Shortcake.  What could be more perfect than to serve this simple and delicious dish on a warm day out in the country?  I spend months waiting for this to happen, and although I love my New York City, having strawberry shortcake out in the real countryside is an all-American treat. 

Saturday afternoon, when we arrived at my parent’s house, we went to the next town over and hit the farm-stand.  Fresh strawberries were plentiful having come into their seasonal peak.  It’s exciting to be at the farm-stand once more and realize that gardens are getting ready to put forth their summer best.  I can't wait to run to my local farmer’s market in Ossining on Saturdays once more for all my shopping and baking needs. 

Making strawberry shortcake is simple.  The process is very similar to making scones, and that’s about all short cake is.  The recipe I’m using this week is from June’s Bon Appetit, and puts a bit of a twist on this usual favorite by adding both balsamic vinegar and black pepper to the macerating liquid for the strawberries.  Being at my mom’s, there aren’t as many kitchen gadgets and toys as I have at home.  Dare I gasp and say there is no Kitchen Aid in the house.  But fear not!!!  You don’t need a mixer for this recipe at all.  Though it does call for a food processor, I ended up making the shortcakes the old fashion way:  by hand.  EEEEEK!!!! 

It was so easy; the only trick is to cut your chilled butter into really small pieces.  All you have to do is mix the dry ingredients in a bowl, add your small pieces of butter and mix/crumb it together with a salad fork.  Once the butter is broken up into “pea sized” pieces add the cream and mix with a wooden spoon.  Turn your dough out onto a floured surface, fold it together a few times and flatten it into a 4x8 rectangle.  Cut the dough into 8 squares and stick them in the fridge to chill for 20 minutes.  Heat the oven to 425 degrees.  Pull your shortcake squares out of the refrigerator, brush with egg wash and then sprinkle with sugar.  Bake for 15 minutes and smile at their golden goodness.

While all of this is happening you can have your strawberries macerating in the sugar, vinegar and black pepper.  This recipe also calls for whipping your chilled cream into a topping, but not having my trusty mixer I admit to buying a tub of Cool Whip…and you know what, I liked it.

This dessert was the perfect compliment to my mom’s crock pot roast and potatoes, and we were properly sated, fat and sassy and ready for a nap when it was all over.  And that’s just what we did.

A posting about Memorial Day wouldn’t be complete without recognizing what the day actually means.  Once called Decoration Day, it was originally created over a hundred years ago to honor lost soldiers from the Civil War.  It didn’t become an actual “government” holiday until 1971.  Over the years people have taken it as a time to remember their loved ones and “decorate” their graves with flowers. 

I haven’t been to my father’s grave since he passed away…I haven’t been to Missouri since he passed away.  It was good for me to go and plant something for him to honor his memory.  I know that taking the flowers is something for the living, the dead could care less, but it’s nice to have a place to go and remember him.  Generally I think of him most when I’m in my garden at home because I know he loved to mow the yard and plant flowers as much as I.  It seems only fitting to plant some catmint at his grave because I also have some growing in my backyard.  I think Dad would have liked it.

It is so nice to get away from the rat race and spend time with family.  I talk a lot about baking, but they don’t often get to taste what I have made from week to week.  It’s important to connect with the food in person as opposed to just writing about it.  My mom always kept us fed and happy as a way of showing her love and I’m sure I get that same trait from her.  I don’t think it’s such a bad thing.  It’s just who I am. 

Showers of Babies

I was so proud and honored to help with our friend Izabella’s baby shower last weekend.  She has been one of my best New York City girlfriends ever since I moved to the East Coast, and from the moment we met at work, years ago, we have rarely been too far apart.  I like her.  She’s smart, funny and feisty…all the things I respond really well to, and I’m certain she is going to make a great mom.  Now let’s just hope I can pull off the responsible uncle part as opposed to the uncle who lets the kids get into the liquor cabinet…

We had been organizing the party for quite sometime and it’s always great when the plan comes together.  Brian spent a lot of time getting the games ready and making a beautiful receiving blanket while I was busy in my usual spot monitoring the kitchen stove.  Cupcakes were the chosen dessert for the festivities primarily because they can be dressed up or down for a party and people can nibble on them while walking around with a drink in their other hand.  Plus, cupcakes are fun.

I haven’t made them in quite awhile; in fact I think it’s been about two years since my last batch.  I remember making them for my friend James’ 30th birthday party and they were quite a hit.  I like presenting them nestled together on stacked cake stands for the feeling of a giant cake.  They sit there beautiful and unassuming, waiting for someone to stop by, pick them up and take a bite.

The flavors we chose were simple vanilla and chocolate, but they were dressed up with frosting/glazes made of fresh fruit and confectioner’s sugar.  I took blueberries, strawberries and mint (respectively) and distilled them down to their juicy essence…syrup in fact, and then just mixed in the sugar until they made it to the desired consistency.  You are looking for a frosting that is sticky and honey-like when you drizzle it.  These toppings are very easy to make as long as you have humidity on your side, but unfortunately humidity and I were not getting along so well on Sunday morning.  I had to keep adding sugar and testing the glazes out on the “extra” cupcakes before I finally found something that would stay on top of the cupcakes and not just run off the side and down on the tray.

Trial and error is part of the fun, and for some reason I seemed to be all over the map in my baking this weekend.  The vanilla cupcakes didn’t want to raise a whole lot, whereas the chocolate cupcakes seemed determine to grow their way out of the pan and take over the kitchen.  Recipes are always funny that way.  You can have a considerable amount of experience with baking and still have some days go well and others just sort of spin out of control.  I suppose that’s life in a nutshell.

The good news is that all things can generally be recovered from with enough patience and a little know how.  My only know how this week was to keep adding sugar to the fruit purees until they made an icing strong enough to hide some of the cupcakes blemishes.  A good cover-up stick is a gal’s best friend at times and at the end of it all I was happy.  The cupcakes looked pretty and festive, tying into Izabella’s bright and cheerful color-scheme for the day, and they tasted pretty darn good too. 

I made the vanilla cupcakes with vanilla paste again instead of extract, and the three sticks of butter in their batter didn’t hurt either.  They were light like an angel food cake, largely from the whipped egg whites folded into the batter at the last moment.  The chocolate cupcakes had a deep, bold flavor from the 1-1/4 cup of cocoa powder they contained.  Green mint icing seemed a natural pairing with the chocolate, but all the flavors seemed to mix and mingle like a perfectly orchestrated cocktail party (or baby shower).

It turned out to be a really beautiful day and everyone seemed to have a great time…especially playing the games.  People always act like they don’t want to play games at parties, but once you get them going the competitive animal comes out and they want to play more and more.  We based some of the games off our friend Andrea’s baby shower, and threw in a few different one’s to spice things up.  The clear favorite was the play-dough based game.  Everyone had five minutes to sculpt a baby out of play-dough and Izabella had to choose the “best” one.  I must say we had some creative and outrageous guests, and the things they came up with weren’t necessarily babies you might find on this planet.  Mars perhaps?

The winners of the games were rewarded with small bottles of Polish vodka and chocolates.   It seemed only fitting since Izabella grew up in Poland, and many of the shower guests like to have a nice sip of vodka from time to time.  There’s certainly nothing wrong with that.  Maybe it was the alcohol contributing to the strange shapes of the play-dough babies.  Sometimes creative genius can lurk inside a bottle…a baby bottle that is.

Brian and I are so looking forward to becoming “uncles” once more and watching our soon to be niece grow up in a loving home with wonderful people as her parents.  We are also looking forward to baby-sitting and quite possibly a diaper change from time to time, though I’m going to have to figure out how to do that one.  I better get to practicing for when I have a baby of my own.  I assume diaper changing will come fairly naturally, not dissimilar to smelling fresh baked pastry wafting on the breeze and realizing it’s time to come out of the oven.   That’s right, I just made a diaper and pastry analogy.  It’s just who I am. 

The neighbor's rhododendron bush.

Carrot Bread

The time of backyard BBQs and fields of blooming flowers is at hand!  May is steadily winding-down; working it’s way toward Memorial Day and the official beginning of the summer season.  Other than those first few weeks of spring blooming with flowers, early summer has to be my favorite time of year…or at least my favorite time of year to look forward to.  There is a distinction of course.

I find I’m always looking ahead to the next exciting project, plan, vacation, etc… and I don’t think I’m alone in this.  What keeps us trudging through the day-to-day activities is a promise of greater, brighter future “things” and I think it’s about time we put a stop to it.  Now, I’m not suggesting canceling all future plans, finding a giant tree and waiting for the divine to strike you down with your purpose in life, but more mildly might I suggest you do something nice for yourself right now!

I have been looking forward to summer so much lately, and when the sun decided to show over the weekend I took advantage.  The first task was to go shopping. Who doesn’t like to go and buy themselves a little something from time to time?  My gal pal, Izabella, and I planned to run a quick errand to a local nursery, but ended up going to a home goods store instead where I was seduced isle by isle with little treasures and finds that I don’t need but still seemed perfectly reasonable to buy…like another cake stand.  I’ve owned up to this habit in the past and will continue to own up to it.  It’s like Indiana Jones searching for the Holy Grail…I just know the perfect cake stand IS out there.

After narrowly escaping the store with our life savings we did manage to get to the nursery and look for red, yellow and blue flowering plants to fill some empty pots on her back porch.  The baby shower is upon us this weekend and there is nothing like a party to force your hand when it comes to all the things you have been putting off doing around your home (or haven’t had time to do for that matter).  We had been looking at a charming, French Country entertaining spread in the June Martha Stewart Living and were feeling quite inspired.  The nursery, Rosedale, is only about fifteen minutes from our house, and I surprisingly had never been there.  The place is massive and they had the cutest little red wagons for you to pull around and fill up with plants.  My red wagon driving skills have decreased over the years, but we managed to get out with what we came for and only injured a few toes of passersby along the way.

On the way home we stopped at the organic market because I needed to get fresh carrot juice for this week’s recipe:  Carrot Bread, and because I wanted some ground turkey and kielbasa to throw on the grill.  After all was said and done I made my way home to start the delicious cooking festivities.

As I exclaimed earlier, the weather was warm and I had summer and BBQ on my mind.  I also had carrot bread on my mind.  For my birthday, Brian got me a book called My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method by Jim Lahey, the owner and baking guru of Sullivan Street Bakery in New York City.  In 2006, a reporter for the New York Times interviewed Jim.  In his interview he gave his recipe for no-knead bread.  Being an avid fan of timesaving techniques, I’ve wanted to try the carrot bread recipe since I saw him do it on the Martha Stewart show. 

When he calls it no-knead, he means it.  It literally took me five minutes to put the few ingredients together in a bowl (this recipe does include yeast), mix them up for about 30 seconds until they come together and then just cover the bowl with plastic wrap and stick it on top of the fridge (or somewhere out of the way that is roughly 72 degrees-ish).  I’ve never seen a baking recipe, let alone bread, where I could spend five minutes and shout from the mountain top “my work here is done!”  You go Jim!

Was I a tad skeptical?  Yes.  Was I pleasantly surprised?  Indeed!!!  Now, the trick is to let your dough sit anywhere from twelve to eighteen hours while the chemical processes that normally happen from kneading naturally occur (but without all the work!).  So I put away the bowl and went to the backyard to pull out the grill.   I haven’t had the grill out since last fall, and it was nice to dust off the harsh winter grit and get it into prime cooking condition.

There is really nothing like grilling your food outdoors to take you to a special place, or at least that’s what it does for me.  Grilling always seemed to be a special occasion growing up and definitely a summer thing.  My dad enjoyed cooking filet mignon wrapped in bacon from the local meat market as well as baked potatoes sealed up in foil.  To this day I always think of him if I ever have a filet.   Paired with a simple salad and a Coors Light, he was happy. 

The burgers and kielbasa I made were great and hit the spot, as did the yummy mustard potato salad we had along with it.  I’m telling you, simple pleasures truly are the best.   Now I just need a field full of wildflowers, a long picnic table and a balmy evening lit up with fireflies to make the picture complete…it’s good to have goals.

Sunday I got up late, but not too late to get my bread going.  Because of the laze fare attitude of this week’s recipe I was able to catch the dough at the eighteen-hour mark and get it ready for the next step.  It had doubled overnight and was ready to be punched down.  All you have to do next is fold it on itself and give it a quick push/knead, then toss it in a flower dusted cotton towel.  Cover the dough with the cloth and let it rise for another two hours.

When an hour and a half has gone by, pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees and get out your Dutch oven.  That’s right…a 4 1/2 to 5 quart Dutch oven with a tight fitting lid is all the equipment you need to make this bread come out like it was wood fired.  Place the Dutch oven in your stove to pre-heat.  When the second rise of your dough is complete, open the stove, take out the hot pot, drop in your dough and put on the lid.  Bake for 25 minutes, then take the lid off and bake for fifteen minutes more.

The carrot bread came out perfectly.  Moist inside and a chewy, crispy crust on the outside.  It’s beautifully studded with walnuts, currants and cumin seeds that caramelize to a deep mahogany brown while sealed inside the magic Dutch oven.  Who would of thought that it could be so easy?  Apparently no one until the New York Times article came out and Jim Lahey has been a huge success ever since. 

For people who are afraid of making bread, this recipe is definitely for you.  My yeast fears have been easing off the longer I’ve been doing this blog, but this is possibly the easiest baked good I have ever made and one of the tastiest.  You don’t even really taste carrot so much as just a general sweetness in the bread mingling with the spicy cumin.  Brian and I also discovered that it goes great paired with maple BBQ baked beans…a little tip from me to you. 

What is the take away from all of this?  Well, it’s a Tuesday, it’s raining and chilly again and I’ve got my warm weekend memories and some leftover bread to keep me warm.  It’s just who I am.

Mother's Day

I don’t know about you, but I love my mom.  She’s always been the rock, the one I can count on and the one who has put up with the vast majority of my “BS” over the years.  It seemed only fitting to celebrate this special day by baking something she would enjoy.  I called her up to ask what her favorite dessert is, and she was torn between chocolate mousse and cheesecake.  Since I already did a posting about my passion for chocolate mousse last fall, the cheesecake was the clear winner.

Now I love a good cheesecake, and it isn’t something I make very often.  I can’t say I remember the last time I made one.  Maybe it’s all the guilty feelings I have when I go to the store to purchase the mountain of cream cheese, sour cream and sometimes ricotta cheese necessary to create the decadent confection.  Once in a while, though, you just gotta let the beast out to run wild, run down that dairy isle and buy up all the blocks of Philadelphia Cream Cheese in site!  And that is exactly what I did.

The recipe I made was from my tried and true Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook.  I found a version of the recipe for the cheesecake online which is very similar to the book’s recipe, except for the crust.  I didn’t want the simple Oreo crust, but instead went for one comprised of the usual suspects:  sugar, butter, flour, egg yolk and vanilla, but this week even the vanilla got an upgrade and I found myself using vanilla paste instead of extract.  My friend Randy, who shares a similar passion for cooking and yummy treat making, gave me a jar of the precious, vanilla bean laden, syrupy goodness. 

I hadn’t used the paste since I was in pastry school and had forgotten how intense it can be.  It seems stronger than using the beans scraped directly from a vanilla bean pod.  Maybe the tiny flecks of vanilla “gold” undergo a transformative and intensifying process while sitting inside the pasty liquid…I can’t say for sure.  All that I know is it’s very, very good.

Since I was making the crust full of vanilla flavor I decided to substitute the extract in the cheesecake filling as well.  I wasn’t kidding when I said you would be buying a lot of blocks of cream cheese.  The original recipe calls for 7 (that’s right, 7) 8 oz blocks of full fat cream cheese along with a cup of sour cream.  This cheesecake in question is New York-Style Cheesecake, which seems only fitting since I’m a bit of a city boy these days.

The sad part of all this is my mother is many miles away in Missouri and wasn’t actually able to taste the cheesecake.  I’m sure I could slip some in a nice Tupperware dish and send it on its way, but somehow I don’t think it would look or taste the same as it did when it came out of the oven.  Cheesecake is a bit temperamental as it is.  I tried to give mine as much love and coaxing as possible for a beautiful, crack-free surface, but it was all for not.

My main issue could have been the pan size.  The recipe calls for a ten-inch spring form pan, and I only had an eight-inch.  I figured what the heck and just went with it.  You start by making your crust and baking it for about 15 minutes to get it going.  Once that cools, you mix up your filling and pour it on top of the crust.  Well, before I knew it I had filled the pan up to the very top and still had batter to spare.  I promptly put the remaining batter into some small ramekins and made little tiny cheesecake soufflés…delish!!!  Anyway, because of the fullness of the pan and a lack of surface area due to a smaller diameter pan, I had to let the cheesecake cook for longer than the recipe recommended just to get it baked all the way through.  I did do all the other steps properly, though, like wrapping the pan in foil and placing it in a larger roasting pan filled halfway up with water (a water bath if you will) for the cheesecake to get a facial while it was in the oven.  I even cracked open the oven door (with the oven off mind you) for an hour after the cheesecake had baked, but by then the damage must have been done and the cracks were there to stay.

Not being one to dwell on the negative, I have to say that the taste was really unbelievable.  Both sweet and savory without being too rich or overpowering, this cheesecake was a hit both with friends and co-workers alike.  We took some over to our friends Izabella and Jonathan’s and had several large slices while finishing the plans for their baby shower coming up in a couple of weeks. 

It seemed rather fitting to be eating a cheesecake inspired by my mother with my dear friend who is a mother-to-be very, very soon.  I’m sure my mom would have enjoyed the cheesecake and had a cup of coffee right along side of us while we gossiped and planned the quickly approaching day of celebration.


I do wish I lived closer to my mother (actually, I wish she lived closer to me), but you do the best you can when you are multiple states and miles apart.  There are many ways to communicate in our great age of technology.  The phone and email are always a good way of keeping in touch, but sometimes you need write a blog entry to say I love you.  It’s just who I am.

Iris blooming in the early May garden.

Reflection

It’s a brilliant pre-summer day and the sun is definitely “a blazin’”.  I’m sitting out in the garden, relaxing after a long weekend full of friends and memories.  We were finally able to have the memorial party for Brian’s mom, Cathy, and it was beautiful.

A long time in the planning for various reasons, most of our close friends were able to come to our home and celebrate the life of someone many did not know, but who deserved recognition.  Brian’s mother passed away in December of 2009.  She lived in Florida with his father, but Brian has wanted to have a party/memorial to celebrate her life and recognize her passing in the company of our closest friends and loved ones.  May Day seemed the proper day for this occasion.

Brian gave a wonderful speech/talk he had thoughtfully written reflecting on the positive aspects of his mother’s life and how these things had influenced him up to present day.  The speech was touching, poignant and illustrated the life of someone whom very few in our company had ever met.  It gave everyone a snapshot into Cathy’s life and a way to relate and understand Brian’s relationship with his mother in a way they might not otherwise have experienced.  I was so proud of him and touched by the reflections.  Our friend Randy also played and sang a beautiful song in honor of the day. 

As Brian told me, he just sort of “made up” the day as he went along, and I think it was perfect.  There is no right or wrong way to celebrate and honor the life of someone close to you.  The most important thing is just to remember.  I think there are many people who’s passing may come and go without the notice of many, and we are fortunate to have so many great friends who wanted to come and pay respect not only to Brian’s mother, but to Brian, showing solidarity in a deeply necessary and human way.  For this we are so thankful.

It’s hard for me not to be moved by Cathy’s passing, not only because she is my partner’s mother, but because her life and death were so similar to that of my father, Jim.  Both passed from complications related to renal failure brought about by long-term complications with diabetes.  The tragic part in this to me is that both of them died so young.  Cathy was just 59, and my dad was about a month and a half shy of this same age.  Many of their health complications could have prevented if they had taken better care of themselves, but I guess people don’t always do what’s best for themselves for various reasons.

We had the party to celebrate those still living, and to remind people you have to “live, live, live”.  I think a lot of us get bogged down in the trivial day to day, get broken, get pushed around more than we would like and in the end you just start to feel tired, defeated or downright depressed.  A party is an antidote to these sorts of feelings.  This may sound contrived, but surrounding yourself with the people you care for most, and that care for you in return is the best way to remind yourself you are in fact alive.  Baking is also a necessary part of the party, at least for me.

I’ve said over and over how feeding your friends is the best way to show your love, and for this party in particular the sentiment couldn’t be more true.  Brian chose the menu for the special day.  We did lots of cheese from our favorite fromagerie, Murray’s, as well as delicious sandwiches catered by Murray's via Randy.  Randy also brought over some delicious pickled beets made by her very own hands.  There were piglets in a blanket for all of us piggies at the party and of course some items slathered in butter and sugar courtesy of yours truly.

Brian requested sugar cookies.  I had made these same cookies a couple of weeks ago for Randy’s birthday party and people seemed to really, really like them.  Since many of the people at our house yesterday were folks that had been at Randy’s celebration, it just made sense to make them again.  This time we chose shapes that were more in line with celebrating Brian’s mom.  We had a platter of cookies dedicated to Florida, where she lived.  I found cute little palm tree and shell cookie cutters as well as using a round food mold to make some oranges.  The other platter was more dedicated to Brian because the white, hobnail cake stand was from 1971, the year of his birth, and contained little flower and bee shaped cookies…the bee being his nickname.

The other item Brian requested was Lemon Bars.  We looked for a Barefoot Contessa recipe because over the years we’ve discovered she never creates anything that isn’t amazing.  I think the lemon bars may have stole the show at the party.  The crust was a very simple concoction of flour, sugar, salt and butter…similar to shortbread, but the filling was ridiculously full of lemon.  The intensity was crazy!  Not only was there a cup of lemon juice in the filling, but also the zest of five lemons.  I’m learning more and more what a secret weapon the zests of fruits really are.  The depth of flavor they bring to a given dessert is quite astounding, but they also work to bring out the best in savory dishes as well.  My passion for lemon was well matched in this delicate, sticky and sweet dessert.

As I said, I’m sitting out in the garden just listening to the world go by.  It’s quite humid and hot and feels like mid-July.  Sometimes it’s good to have a day like this come along a little early.  It’s nice to get a taste of summer with the knowledge it will be cool again tomorrow.  Luckily it wasn’t like this outside yesterday or people would have been melting.

We spent a great deal of time out in the garden during the party.  Most of our friends came up from the city and it’s refreshing for them to sit amidst some greenery from time to time.  I’ve worked hard on this garden for the past three years and it’s always my hope that people will come over and sit a spell, feeling calm and relaxed in the ever-growing space.  This garden has been therapeutic for me.  I’ve worked through a lot of emotional experiences in this space with my hands in the dirt, a lot of the emotions being about my dad.  It was only fitting that we celebrate Brian’s mom in this space too and fondly remember her for all the good things she did and the positive ways she influenced Brian.

Last weekend we planted a tree in Cathy’s honor, naming it Doris after her mother.  It’s a flowering dogwood tree, which is the state tree of both Virginia and Missouri where Cathy grew up and lived respectively.  Brian gave his speech next to the tree, and it stood by proudly watching.  Over the years I’ve come to a place where my beliefs about death and what happens after have changed, and in the end it doesn’t really matter what goes on after.  What is important is to be present in everyday you have and not to have regrets.  Regrets weigh heavily on a person and can extinguish a bright light faster than anything I know.  I do my best not to have any.  It’s just who I am.