You Can't Take It With You

Relax, unwind, and let your mind float gently away on the breeze as the sound of birds softly chirping in the forest lull you to slumber.  There are crickets too, and waterfalls splashing down on rocks in the riverbed.  The river moves through a silent nighttime jungle, and resting along the surface is your mind.  Become one with nature and all your worldly cares will be removed…or at least that’s the promise of a good massage soundtrack.

Brian and I found ourselves in this very predicament last weekend while being salt scrubbed and gently worked over with hot stones on our mini vacation.  As I mentioned the previous week we had been planning a stay in Sharon Springs at the American Hotel for a long weekend, but when we found out they were booked we immediately began looking for another place to run away and hide from the world. 

It isn’t very often we get to take a trip together, just the two of us, and it was something we’d been meaning to do for awhile but kept getting caught up in the rat race of life.  We settled on a place known as Barley Sheaf…or The Sheaf as we took to calling it.  It’s a bed and breakfast not far from Doylestown, Pennsylvania (an amazing old town full of charm and shops.)  They refer to Barley Sheaf as an inn with spa services, but I never quite figured out what the difference is between an inn and a bed and breakfast.  I don’t really suppose it matters much. 

Neither of us had ever stayed at a bed and breakfast before and truth be told we might not have stayed there if we knew that an inn was the same thing, but in this case ignorance is bliss.  I never realized staying in someone’s home could be so comfortable and relaxing…but I think this place had a little more going for it in the privacy sector than some may have.  I always thought at a bed and breakfast you had to share a bathroom with other people or feel compelled to make polite conversation at communal dinners.  Happily, this was not the case at all and we found ourselves in a pleasant room decorated in 1930’s décor in celebration of a onetime inhabitant by the name of George Kaufman.

Kaufman was a playwright engaged in making a lot of work from the 1920’s – 1950’s and in fact had either written or directed a play on Broadway every year during this time period.  There was George Kaufman memorabilia all over The Sheaf and each of the rooms were named for one of his famous plays.  Our room was aptly called You Can’t Take It With You…and isn’t that the truth? 

You Can’t Take It With You won both a Pulitzer Prize for the play and an Oscar for the film version, no small feat.  Though I have never seen either staging, the name is what struck me when I was looking online at the list of rooms.  I was also drawn to the spa tub and steam shower if I were to be completely honest.  Our room was billed as having been Kaufman’s former writing room and I would like thinking a little creative genius might have been leftover in the space.  There were copies of playbills, photographs of George Kaufman and his famous friends all over the place.  Apparently the Marx Brothers were frequent guests along with Irving Berlin and Gershwin.  

The historic feeling was what I enjoyed most.  I know it has been renovated from top to bottom, but the owners managed to keep the charm going strong, choosing period furniture for the main spaces, but still having modern amenities for those of us inclined to like indoor plumbing (and steam showers).  But I think it was the outside setting that was most spectacular for this city escapee.  Working farms, fields of Queen Anne’s lace and goldenrod, geese soaring high overhead and that wonderful fresh country smell I often go on and on about, surrounded the area.  This is the kind of place where you go to sit in an old wooden swing and rock the afternoon away with no feelings of guilt.

It all had a very English sensibility to me.  There were lots of old stone and bronze statues dotting the landscape, a lovely rose garden and tons and tons of butterfly bushes (my favorite).  I swear I could have planted the gardens there myself for their content was so similar to our backyard it was kind of scary.  I just need a little more space to have some winding paths and a pond out back, and then I would be in good shape.

I miss wandering around a field with no place to go.  I did it quite often as a kid growing up in the country.  There were several stands of woods not too far from my house and I used to go and get lost in them for hours on end.  At first it was scary and exciting because I didn’t know for certain where I was, but as I got older and continued to explore a little more I realized they weren’t nearly as vast as I thought and could navigate them pretty well in the end.  The mystery of an unknown path in the woods is still magical for me, and Barley Sheaf had several paths (mown in this case), leading to places unknown.  They didn’t go very far once I started hiking, but the feeling I used to get as a kid was still there.  I like that.

With all the stone décor and English inspired flowers, I ended up with my baking inspiration taking a somewhat European bent.  The inn has a fantastic chef, a real diamond in the rough for sure; who is producing beautifully conceived dishes out of his small kitchen.  He also had a few helpers and one was the B&B owner’s mother-in-law.   She seemed to be in charge of the baking, and both mornings we were treated to beautiful cinnamon raisin bread and an apple galette at brunch along with various other pastries and naughty items.  They really were amazing. 

I’d passed by a gnarled looking apple tree on the property on one of my “mown path” adventures and I got to thinking about the delicious apples mingled with butter and pastry and decided I needed to make something in honor of this unexpected treat.  When we got home on Sunday night I began to look through my collection of cookbooks and was drawn to one by Nigel Slater called The Kitchen Diaries.  In this book Nigel recounts a year in his life based on seasonal foods and the recipes he was making at the time (not too dissimilar from what I’m doing, but he does it much more frequently).  He lives in England and all of his writing is about the farmer’s markets and lovely English produce he manages to acquire seemingly daily.  The book is an enjoyable read as well as having recipes intermingled along with his storytelling, and it ties life and food together in an entertaining way.

The dessert I came across was for an aptly named English Apple Cake (click the link and scroll down to find the recipe and back story).  What I liked most about it was its treatment of the apples; they are front and center.  It calls for three “eating” apples which are diced small, mixed with cinnamon and brown sugar and layered on top of a very, very chalked full of butter cake batter.  It’s almost like an upside down tart, except the apples are on the top to begin with in their own little layer, and gently cradled by a spongy and moist cake.  This dessert is not overly sweet, with the tartness of the apples coming through in each bite and makes a great addition to a brunch table.  Hopefully the chef at The Sheaf would be proud…or at least the mother-in-law.

When you have to come back to reality from a weekend away it can be difficult, but there is some comfort in the routine, and especially if your routine requires baking something delicious.  I can think of worse things to be sure.  You may not be able to take the spa with you (maybe the soaps and lotions will fit in your bag), but when things get stressful maybe you can get a hold of one of those Sounds CD’s and pretend your boss isn’t pacing around waiting for you to deliver some workaday bit of importance for a client who is just going to change it tomorrow anyway.  Or you can bake an apple cake, pour a large mug of coffee and call in sick on a rainy day.   I think I might.  It’s just who I am.