In April Mr. Friday and I had dinner with old friends. We chattered and caught up, drinking good wine and eating delicious homemade nibbles. I have always have store-bought hummus. It has never occurred to me to whip it up myself. Get yourself to the kitchen. Start impressing people!

https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/hummus-237832

Dinner was a divine surprise: a garlic chicken casserole. I still have photos on my phone recording the moment when Tom used a large screwdriver to pry apart the dough seal that lined the rim of the enormous cast iron casserole. Cue the FX department. A triumphant march accompaniment would have been appropriate. A hot, streaming cloud ballooned, filling the kitchen with delightful garlic and chicken auras, and then dissipated to reveal a chicken casserole that was worthy of Julia Child. It was deelish.

Tom followed a Dorie Greenspan recipe for Garlic Chicken in a Pot. I always think of Dorie Greenspan as being a baker, so perhaps I need to expand my reading matter. Here is a video of her explaining patiently to television folk about the adaptability of the recipe: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dorie-greenspan-brings-chicken-in-a-pot-to-the-dish/

Last weekend we faced a conundrum: what to serve a guest for dinner. Actually, it was Mr. Friday trying to find a recipe to cook in his new cast iron, 6-quart casserole dish. He regarded me scornfully when I suggested Vivian Howard’s Chicken Rice meal. Too easy. (I love it, and will be making it this weekend. Here is the recipe so you can make it, too: https://www.washingtonpost.com/recipes/scarletts-chicken-and-rice/15591/) Spaghetti, perhaps? More scorn and derision. And as he thought, he remembered our friend Tom’s tour de force dinner from April. And we rooted around the Internets and found the very Dorie Greenspan recipe.

Garlic Chicken In A Pot
By Dorie Greenspan

YIELD 
4 servings
TIME
 1 hour 30 minutes

½ salt-preserved lemon, rinsed well
¼ cup sugar
⅓ cup olive oil
16 small peeled potatoes (white or sweet) or 2 large peeled potatoes, each cut into 8 pieces
16 small onions or shallots, peeled and trimmed
8 carrots, peeled and quartered
4 stalks celery, trimmed and quartered
4 heads garlic, cloves separated but not peeled
Salt and freshly ground pepper
3 sprigs fresh thyme
3 sprigs Italian parsley
2 sprigs rosemary
1 chicken, whole or cut up
1 cup chicken broth
½ cup white wine
About 1 1/2 cups flour

PREPARATION
Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Remove zest from preserved lemon and cut zest into small squares; save pulp for another use. Bring 1 cup water and the sugar to a boil, drop in zest and cook 1 minute; drain and set aside.
Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large skillet over high heat. Add vegetables and garlic, season with salt and pepper and sauté until brown on all sides. (If necessary, do this in 2 batches.) Spoon vegetables into a 4 1/2- to 5-quart lidded Dutch oven and stir in herbs and lemon zest.
Return skillet to heat, add another tablespoon of oil and brown chicken on all sides, seasoning it with salt and pepper as it cooks. Tuck chicken into casserole, surrounding it with vegetables. Mix together the broth, wine and remaining olive oil and pour it over chicken and vegetables.
Mix flour with enough hot water (about 3/4 cup) to make a malleable dough. On a floured surface, work dough into a sausage; place dough on rim of casserole. Press lid onto dough to seal casserole. Bake 55 minutes. To break seal, work the point of a screwdriver between pot and lid. If chicken is whole, quarter it. Chicken may be served in the pot or arranged with vegetables on a serving platter.

Thank you, New York Times. https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1804-garlic-chicken-in-a-pot?

One caveat, our grocery store did not stock salt-preserved lemons. So we had another Internets scramble until we found Mark Bittman’s recipe for a quick salt-preserved lemon recipe. Here is his video: https://www.nytimes.com/video/dining/1248068993504/quick-preserved-lemons.html (If you have problems viewing the video – what I did as the sous chef was – I had three organic lemons [non-waxed], which I washed well. Then I sliced the lemons, removed the seeds, and chopped the lemon slices. I put the chopped lemons in a cute Ball jar I found in the pantry, and added 2 tablespoons of sugar and 1 tablespoon of Maldon salt. 2:1 ratio, in case you are using art major math. And now we have a beautiful glowing jar of salt-preserved lemons on the top shelf of the fridge, which I admire daily.)

And Mr. Friday did play around with the flexibility of the recipe – he added some parsnips that were lingering in the vegetable bin, used only two full heads of garlic – and as it is, there is still a whiff of garlic in corners of the house five days later, in case you wondered. And he used 1 cut-up chicken, because we just couldn’t fathom how to brown a whole chicken in a skillet. Not without incurring some major kitchen disasters…

As sous chef I was also assigned dough preparation, which was much more enjoyable than chopping lemons. It was fun to roll the dough out into a long rope, without worrying if it would rise and be edible, unlike some of my latest bread experiments. It sealed the casserole quite nicely, and Mr. Friday was afforded his own steamy moment of triumph when he took a screwdriver and prised the top from the bottom. Bon appétit, indeed!

“The chicken does not exist only in order to produce another egg. He may also exist to amuse himself, to praise God, and even to suggest ideas to a French dramatist.”
― G.K. Chesterton

We have taken the Spy Test Kitchen on the road this year, so we are recycling a column that seems to run almost every Thanksgiving. NPR has Susan Stamberg’s mother-in-law’s cranberry relish, we at the Spy have The Tall One’s Pilgrim Sandwich. Gobble, gobble!

Mama Stamberg’s Cranberry Relish: https://food52.com/recipes/38994-mama-stamberg-s-cranberry-relish

I hold Calvin Trillin in very high esteem, as my friends who have often been buttonholed by me badly re-telling his witty food and family travel tales, can tell you. But I think he is way off the mark when he posits that the national dish for Thanksgiving should be spaghetti carbonara. Really? Where is the fun in that?

http://www.rlrubens.com/Thanksgiving.html

Thanksgiving at our house was an exclusive affair this year, as my Gentle Readers know. There were just the four of us, and a 23.59 pound turkey. And here we are, the day after Thanksgiving. Post-parade, post-football, post-feast. Also post-washing up. Heavens to Betsy, what a lot of cleaning up there was. And the fridge is packed with mysterious little bundles of leftovers. We continue to give thanks that one of our visiting college students is an incessant omnivore. He will plow systematically through Baggies of baked goods, tin-foiled-turkey bits, Saran wrapped-celery, Tupperwared tomatoes and wax papered-walnuts. The Pesky Pescatarian dispatched her piece of swordfish with efficiency and aplomb, which is mysterious, since she had a tuna sandwich for lunch and the Tall One abstained from a mid-day meal…

It was not until the Tall One was in high school that his abilities were honed and polished with ambitious zeal. His healthy personal philosophy is, “Waste not, want not.” A sentiment I hope comes from generations of hardy New Englanders as they plowed their rocky fields, dreaming of candlelit feasts and the iPhone Xs of the future.

I have watched towering constructions of food rise from the plate as he constructs interesting arrangements of sweet, sour, crunchy and umami items with the same deliberation and concentration once directed toward Lego projects. And I am thankful that few of these will fall to the floor and get walked over in the dark. Of course, there is the dog, Luke, so the five second rule is never tested.

I read that swan might have been the main course at the first Thanksgiving. How very sad. I have no emotional commitment to turkeys, and I firmly belief that as beautiful as swans are, swans are mean and would probably peck my eyes out if I didn’t feed them every scrap of bread in the house. Which means The Tall One would go hungry. A veritable conundrum.

The Pilgrim Sandwich is the Tall One’s magnum opus. It is his turducken without the histrionics. It is a smorgasbord without the Swedish chef. It is truly why we celebrate Thanksgiving.

This is a pretty feeble Pilgrim Sandwich recipe. 
http://cbsop.com/recipes/the-pilgrim-sandwich/

This is way too fancy and cloying with fussy elements – olive oil for a turkey sandwich? Hardly. You have to use what is on hand from the most recent Thanksgiving meal – to go out to buy extra rolls is to break the unwritten rules of the universe. There are plenty of Parker House rolls in your bread box right this minute – go use them up!
http://www.rachaelray.com/recipe.php?recipe_id=4202

And if you are grown up and sophisticated, here is the answer for you. Fancy Thanksgiving leftovers for a grown up brunch: http://www.saveur.com/article/Menu/A-Brunch-For-The-Day-After-Thanksgiving

Here are The Tall One’s ingredients for his signature Pilgrim Sandwich:
Toast (2 slices)
Turkey (2 slices)
Cranberry Sauce (2 teaspoons)
Gravy (2 tablespoons)
Mashed Potatoes (2 tablespoons)
Stuffing (2 tablespoons)
Barbecue Sauce (you can never have too much)
Bacon (if there is some hanging around)
Mayonnaise (if you must)
Lettuce (iceberg, for the crunch)
Celery stalk (more crunch)
Salt, pepper

And now I am taking the dog for a walk before I consider making my own.

Dan Pashman, who hosts the highly amusing and informative podcast, The Sporkful, thought that the run-of-the-mill Pilgrim Sandwich was a little too bready, and he has a brilliant alternative notion: fry up some of the leftover stuffing, à la hash brown patties, to make a new vehicle for holding all the turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce and gravy together. Brilliant! I do not believe that spaghetti carbonara would taste as good today, unless perhaps, it was enclosed in some fried stuffing patties…

http://www.sporkful.com/thanksgiving-is-for-eaters-with-amy-sedaris-2/

“The Indians were so disgusted that on the way back to their village after dinner one of them made a remark about the Pilgrims that was repeated down through the years and unfortunately caused confusion among historians about the first Thanksgiving meal. He said, ‘What a bunch of turkeys!’ ”
-Calvin Trillin

One of my favorite movie scenes is when Andie McDowell is sitting in a cramped restaurant booth as she sings her pie song in the Nora Ephron movie Michael. This is a terrible copy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9rgh8MCpe8 The character Dorothy is earnest and awkward and sweet – rather like one of my less-than-perfect pies.

The possibilities of pie are endless. And I do not mean just the numerical constant that is π: 3.14159… I do like baking a pie on March 14, π Day, but that is the end of my fascination with the number. I do not bake many pies a year, which is probably why I have never yet rolled out a round pie shell. Amoebas R us, even with our almost weekly home-baked pizza pie. Among the kitchen skills I would like to master: round, flaky pie crusts (and within that set, nicely plaited lattice tops for cherry pies); round, thin-crusted pizza pies, and bread that will not break a bone when it is dropped on my foot. You can have sweet pies, savory pies, cream pies, hand pies, fried pies, and humble pies.

With Thanksgiving coming next week there is pressure to bake something amazing – a Thanksgiving pie that will go down in family history, although, frankly, I don’t think anything is ever going to beat that Easter when the spider crawled out from under the freshly picked nasturtium on the lemon cheesecake. I have been looking at various pie recipes, and the beautiful versions that Food52 and the New York Times kitchens are sharing are quite intimidating. They can’t leave well enough alone, and have gentrified and gilded the lilies on all of the comforting pies from our childhood memories. https://food52.com/blog/8744-9-ways-to-fancy-up-your-pies

My mother baked a plain and servicable pumpkin pie every Thanksgiving, and it was very tasty, and we looked forward to it every year. It had a nicely crimped, evenly baked, homemade piecrust. I crimp awkwardly, and I have to remember to turn the pie around halfway through the baking process so the crust browns evenly.

Some years we had a lemon meringue pie, too. The lemon filling came straight from Jell-o or My-T-Fine, but the meringue was homemade and towering and diaphanous. Divine.

We used to know a couple who scorned ritual birthday cakes, and served pie instead. An apple pie for your birthday? You might as well rake leaves or fold laundry on your birthday, too, while wearing a hair shirt and practicing good posture. The pie couple has since divorced.

Our ritual birthday cake is a Boston Cream Pie. I am not being a hypocrite here – Boston Cream Pie is actually a cake. I bake a round, yellow cake, split it, slather one half with vanilla pudding, and pour a generous thick, gleaming coating of chocolate ganache over the reassembled cake. If I have tempered the chocolate correctly, it cools into a shiny, slick surface. Perfect for reflecting those myriad birthday candles.

It took a few years to master the art of the Boston Cream Pie. It was hit or miss for a while. There were the couple of times I was bent of heeding Martha who whispered tauntingly to me that the best way to slice the cake into two perfect halves was by using dental floss. She did not say to use plain dental floss. Our BCP had a faint hint of peppermint a couple of times, before I decided that the serrated bread knife did a masterful slicing job.

I can never remember my favorite ganache recipe and have to go look it up in a chocolate-speckled cookbook that opens to just one single recipe.It is really meant to cover an incredible flourless chocolate cake. I think I like the wicked requirement of bourbon, instead of the vanilla that the faint-hearted use.

3 ounces semisweet chocolate
3 ounces unsalted butter, softened
1 tablespoon brandy or bourbon

Melt the chocolate and butter together over a low heat, stirring until smooth. Stir in the brandy. Pour over the top of the cooled cake, smoothing with a spatula, and let it drip down the sides. (The ganache recipe is from Lee Bailey’s Country Desserts, which I cannot find digitized or linked to any place. But if you need a good flourless cake recipe, drop me a line!)

So bake what you love on Thanksgiving. And as you gather together, think of past Thanksgivings, and remember to sing:

“Pie
Me oh my
Nothing tastes sweet, wet, salty and dry
all at once o well it’s pie
Apple!
Pumpkin!
Minced
an’ wet bottom.
Come to your place everyday if you’ve got em’
Pie
Me o my
I love pie”
-Andie McDowell

Skulking in my front hall is a large stainless steel bowl, brimming with evil intent and oodles of leftover Halloween candy. Being new to our neighborhood I didn’t know what to expect in the way of trick or treaters. I didn’t know if this was a street that the kids flocked to or shunned. So I bought a lot of Halloween candy. Just in case.

Our next door neighbors’ house seemed like it would be a real draw for the thrill seekers: there is an well-lighted, moving skeleton of a fire-breathing dragon, and another skeleton (human) that is either escaping from, or getting ready to leap down into, the chimney. Strings of purple and green lights flash along the roofline. Scary robotic cats line the front porch. There are dozens of foam gravestones, planted with precision in the middle of the lawn, and lighted ghosts and jack o’lanterns are lurking among the shrubberies. The kids will either hit this place like crazy, or will be deathly afraid of it.

Our current neighbors’ is a relatively restrained display of plastic-y Halloween zeal. We once lived down the block from people who went overboard on Halloween. One fabled year they built a corn maze in their front yard, and had a Freddy Krueger wannabee periodically rev up a real chain saw. There was a mysterious, silent figure holding s scythe. Our children, admittedly tiny and rational, refused to set foot on the property, even with the promise that there were full-size Snickers bars available to those who made it through the labyrinthian challenge.

I guess I can’t take it personally that our modest Halloween display was not alluring enough to draw crowds. We have half a dozen lighted pumpkins and a pair of black plastic flamingo skeletons poked into the urns with the Martha-approved rust-colored chrysanthemums. Maybe it was the tasteful hydrangea wreath with a chrysanthemum-coordinated rust-colored bow that sent them back into the night.

Two little girls braved knocking at our front door. They were a little taken aback when Luke the wonder dog barked with all the ferocity he normally reserves for the regular home invasions by the UPS guy. But when he was penned up in the kitchen, the girls took their fair share of Halloween treats, and not a goodie more. Which leaves me with this bowl brimming with quality candy.

I didn’t want us to be the bad neighbors who handed out raisins or popcorn balls. But I didn’t want to be the ones handing out the full-size Snickers, either. There has to be a happy medium between excess and handing out the wrong kind of candy. Did I want us to be known as the People Who Dole Out Dum Dum Lollipops at Halloween? Of course not. Sugarless gum? Hell, no. We had snack-size Reese’s peanut butter cups, glow-in-the-dark Twix bars (also snack-size), and the new-fangled dark chocolate (snack-size) Twix bars. Better than Tootsie rolls, but not as good as Bendicks Bitter Mints.

I doubt if our visiting princesses were super impressed by our candy. We had merely lived up to the neighborhood contract and had plenty o’candy ready for the invading hoarde of trick or treaters. Maybe next year we will get a few more. In the meantime, what to do with all that leftover chocolate?

The savory leftovers at Thanksgiving are one thing. Who doesn’t like sitting down with a nice turkey sandwich and a sliver of pie after all the pesky relatives have gone home? The idea of baking with leftover Halloween candy is mildly nauseating. I can’t face Hershey Kisses at the best of times, but to think of them as a massive decorative component is really quite beyond me. M&Ms and candy corn? I guess it depends on your sweet tooth. Here are some links to recipes that might just bail you out.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/voraciously/wp/2018/10/27/six-recipes-to-use-up-all-of-your-extra-halloween-candy/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.e530e45692ab

https://www.foodandwine.com/news/leftover-halloween-candy-recipes

I am going to take the high road with our leftover candy, and donate it to folks who might appreciate it as much as the little princesses, if not more. https://www.operationgratitude.com/express-your-thanks/halloween-candy/

That way Luke the wonder dog and I might not have to take an extra-long walk this afternoon. It can be snack-sized.

‘Mr. Wonka: “Don’t forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he wanted.”
Charlie Bucket: “What happened?”
Mr. Wonka: “He lived happily ever after.”’
― Roald Dahl

There is lots going on this weekend on the Eastern Shore waterfronts. Chestertown is preparing for the 18th Sultana’s Downrigging Weekend Tall Ship and Wooden Boat Festival. This four-day extravaganza boasts ships aplenty, tours, music, lectures, classic cars, fireworks and food. http://sultanaeducation.org/public-programs/sultana-public-sails/downrigging-weekend-2/

Or if you are lucky enough to be in St. Michaels on Saturday, you can join the proud ranks of the oyster lovers at this year’s OysterFest. Come rain or shine, there will be oysters galore at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum’s annual OysterFest. http://cbmm.org/events/annual-festivals-and-special-events/oysterfest/

“He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.”
-Jonathan Swift

In addition to oysters in St. Michaels, there will also be dogs, boats, beer, music, Miss Edna the cat, and the re-launch of the 1889 bugeye Edna E. Lockwood. You can get more information at the website, but here are the basic ticket prices: OysterFest admission is $5 for CBMM adult members, or $18 for non-member adults; $15 for seniors and students with ID; and $6 for children ages 6 to 17.

There is that old saying that oysters should only be eaten in months that contain the letter “R” – September through April. Now, because of oyster farms in cold waters and modern refrigeration, it’s safe to eat oysters raw anytime. Nowadays we don’t eat them in “R” months because oysters spawn during warmer weather and just don’t taste good. Oysters generally taste better in the late fall and early winter months because at this point of the oyster’s life cycle it is richer and plumper. And here we are, right next to the Chesapeake Bay; pretty lucky not to be in Iowa.

“As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.”
-Ernest Hemingway

Oyster Rules
Make sure they smell good.
Make sure they’re cold.
If you’ve never tried one, have your first one naked.
Slurp, then chew!
Don’t pour out the liquor – it is full of briny flavor.
Don’t put the shell back on the ice tray.

https://www.bonappetit.com/trends/article/how-to-eat-and-taste-an-oyster

We think anything cooked with bacon is worth trying. Perhaps you should try fried oysters: https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/fried-oysters-with-bacon-garlic-and-sage

Chesapeake Oyster Loaf: https://www.geniuskitchen.com/recipe/chesapeake-oyster-loaf-289421

To encourage and whet your appetite: Oyster shell crafts!

Oyster shell chandelier: https://dixiedelightsonline.com/2012/07/oyster-shell-chandelier-porch-projects.html

Oyster shell salt and pepper cellars: http://www.designsponge.com/2013/11/wedding-diy-oyster-shell-salt-cellars.html

Oyster shell dish – where would we be without Martha? https://www.marthastewart.com/269620/oyster-shell-dish

Fun facts to know and tell about oysters: https://www.inahalfshell.com/know-oysters/#more-5354

“It should be opened at street temperature in a cool month, never iced, and plucked from its rough irregular shell at once, so that its black gills still vibrate and cringe with the shock of the air upon them. It should be swallowed, not too fast, and then its fine salt juices, more like the smell of rock pools at low tide than any other food in the world, should be drunk at one gulp from the shell. Then, of course, a bite or two of buttered brown bread must follow, better to stimulate the papilles…and then, of course, of course, a fine mouthful of a white wine.”
-M.F.K. Fisher

And a good, long read from Calvin Trillin: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/11/22/no-daily-specials

Have a great weekend!

“‘O Oysters,’ said the Carpenter, You’ve had a pleasant run! Shall we be trotting home again?’ But answer came there none – And this was scarcely odd, because They’d eaten every one.”
-Lewis Carroll

Here it is, mid-October and I am finally wearing a sweater. A very light sweater, I admit, but it has two long sleeves and I pulled it on over my head. I am ready for the great apple gathering.

You can never have too many apples. I love having a big bowl of apples on the table in the kitchen. It looks artful and smells wonderful. It is less expensive than cut flowers, and is right there, out in the open, when I wander helplessly into the kitchen looking for something to gnaw on. Obnoxiously, some people say that apples are nature’s dental floss; how prosaic and demeaning for the noble apple, which has been captured in language that is so much more romantic and transporting.

Read these names, and see if you don’t suddenly have a yen to wander into your own kitchen to rustle up a sweet snack:
Allen’s Everlasting apple
Ambrosia apple
Beautiful Arcade apple
Beauty of Bath apple
Bedfordshire Foundling apple
Bloody Ploughman apple
Brown Snout apple
Buckingham apple – Pale yellow flushed and mottled with red, and striped and blushed with
bright red. The surface is covered with white dots. Shape is oblate and somewhat
irregular with tough thick skin is tough and flesh juicy, yellow, crisp and sprightly
subacid. It has a small core and a short stalk.*
Catshead apple
Cheddar Cross apple
Coeur de Boeuf apple
D’Arcy Spice apple
Doctor Harvey apple
Duchess of Oldenburg apple
Esopus Spitzenburg apple – said to be Thomas Jefferson’s favorite!*
Fallstaff apple
Foxwhelp apple
Frostbite apple
Goof apple
Horneburger Pancake apple
Kentish Fillbasket apple
King Cole apple
Michelin apple
Nonnetit Bastard apple
Northern Lights apple
Northern Spy apple – one of our personal faves (There is also a Prairie Spy apple)
Obelisk apple
Peasgood’s Nonsuch apple
Pixie Crunch apple
Scotch Dumpling apple
Sheepnose apple
Sir Isaac Newton’s Tree apple
Twenty Ounce apple
Westfield Seek-no-Further apple

Visit this link to see even more poetic apple names. You may be inspired to do a still life painting of apples, or you can surely find a name for the pub you have always wanted to open:* https://www.orangepippin.com/apples/z

I digress.

Right now is an excellent time to stock up on apples that store well, either in your coolish back hall, in the fridge, or in your basement; someplace cool and dark. Apples that are ripening now in October have the best chance of keeping well. Pick wisely. Red Delicious, Winesap, Rome, McIntosh, Golden Delicious. Sort through your apple haul, and choose medium-sized apples, checking for bruises or broken skin. Eat the large ones now and use the bruised apples for baking or applesauce. Some apples will keep for up to five months, but you should check often to see how the ripening process is – there is a reason for some of those old sayings, and you don’t want to discover that one bad apple three months from now. More helpful hints can be found here: http://www.pickyourown.org/Apples_how_to_store_for_the_winter.php

Some apples are better for applesauce: Cortland, Golden Delicious, Braeburn, Rome. Some are better for pies: Granny Smith, Sun Crisp, Pink Lady. Thanksgiving is just around the corner, so start practicing your pie crusts!

There are more uses for apples that snacks on the fly, applesauce or pie.
Our kitchen god, Mark Bittman, has a deelish recipe for Apple Crisp, with oatmeal and cranberries: https://www.markbittman.com/recipes-1/shawn-hubbells-apple-crisp-with-cranberry-oatmeal-topping

And here are some others: https://www.geniuskitchen.com/ideas/fall-apple-recipes-6372?c=24704

And the best use of apples (and oh, so seasonal) is apple cider doughnuts. Yumsters! https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/bas-best-apple-cider-doughnuts

“And then there is that day when all around,
all around you hear the dropping of the apples, one
by one, from the trees. At first it is one here and one there,
and then it is three and then it is four and then nine and
twenty, until the apples plummet like rain, fall like horse hoofs
in the soft, darkening grass, and you are the last apple on the
tree; and you wait for the wind to work you slowly free from
your hold upon the sky, and drop you down and down. Long
before you hit the grass you will have forgotten there ever
was a tree, or other apples, or a summer, or green grass below,
You will fall in darkness…”
― Ray Bradbury

Last weekend, as we were relaxing after an accumulation of hurricane stress (little realizing we were about to gird our loins for Hurricane Michael), Mr. Friday decided that he wanted to do some cooking. In his charmed life, Mr. Friday likes to cook to relax, and he produces some marvelous meals. I, on the other hand, like to think I should bake to feel creative and release my inner Thomas Keller. My baked goods are consistently disappointing. The last time I tried baking bread the dough never rose, and we sadly viewed the final results as I tipped them, thuddingly, into the trash.

I try to follow the rules. Maybe it’s because I once heard Martha proclaim that baking isn’t an art, but a science. I have scales. I have fantastic measuring cups. I measure precisely. I try to avoid humid days for rolling out fragile doughs — never mind that it is almost always pouring down rain outside the baking tent on The Great British Bakeoff, and they can still bake the most diaphanous sponge cakes and towering tiers of meringues. I find a warm corner of the kitchen and cover the bowl of dough with a crisp, fresh linen tea towel, and yet the dough refuses to rise. My cakes tilt. My cookies spread. Brownies always work out, but they are rather forgiving and basic. Not soul-satisfying to create. There is no magical thinking required when you bake a warm pan of brownies.

Mr. Friday, however, reads an oft-tested and trusted recipe, and decides that he can make it better. And on Sunday he took on Food52. Damn him. He made their very attractive and tasty Baked Pasta with Sausage Ragù for Sunday night dinner. Mr. Friday also made enough ziti that he has bundled two neatly labeled Tupperware containers into the freezer for future dinners. For a night when I have been overcome by existential ennui about the state of the world. He had fun in the kitchen and relaxed and effortlessly prepared a few great meals. He is kind and thoughtful. The next time I bake I will drop the resulting leaden loaf of bread on his foot as a signal of my impotent rage.

Baked Pasta wit Sausage Ragù
https://www.tastecooking.com/recipes/baked-pasta-with-sausage-ragu/

The substitutions Mr. Friday made:
• He halved the recipe — there are just the two of us, although Luke the wonder dog would be oh, so grateful if we pulled up a chair for him, too.
• Instead of using 8 cups of chopped tomatoes, he used about 4 cups of leftover, homemade spaghetti sauce.
• Instead of 2 pounds of sausage, removed from its casings, he broke up about 6 meatballs and 6 sausage links from the leftover spaghetti sauce
• Instead of 1 cup of heavy cream, he used about 3/4 cup of half and half, because, you know, every calorie counts.

And there you go. I made some aromatic garlic bread — because you can’t possibly have any other kind — and ripped open a bag o’salad. We splurged on a nice bottle of Hess Cabernet Sauvignon, and nursed headaches on Monday morning.

But, feeling like we have money in the bank, we now have two more delicious batches of Food52-ish baked ziti in the freezer, so we can confidently sally forth and be fueled while picking up the branches that fell when Hurricane Michael zipped through our back yard. Listen to your inner cook, and bend some rules to your own devices.

Have a great weekend!

“When the phone rang I was in the kitchen, boiling a potful of spaghetti and whistling along with an FM broadcast of the overture to Rossini’s ‘The Thieving Magpie,’ which has to be the perfect music for cooking pasta.”
― Haruki Murakami

It is beginning to cool down, at night at least. The dogwoods look as if they are considering changing color as they rustle in the breeze. They’ve gone from dull green to slightly bronze-tinged this week. And our noble raised vegetable garden bed experiment has finally come to a seasonal end.

I looked out at the tangle of a garden that I have been avoiding assiduously for the past month, and realized that I needed to take pity on our neighbors, and take a machete to the jungle growth. It was a small 8 foot by eight foot garden bed, and we overloaded it with our ambitions and expectations.

It was a giddy day when we built the frame for the beans. We transplanted twelve seedlings in their precious little peat cups. The vines took off and grew like crazy, making us believe that Jack and the Giant would come tearing through the yard sometime this summer. We had a veritable curtain of bean vines. We picked exactly eleven individual beans. All summer. No Jack, no Giant, no golden goose. Just a lot of vines. There must be a reason for this.

After researching this problem, Google has a lot of answers for me. https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/vegetables/beans/bean-blossoms-no-pods.htm
I hesitate to think that we lacked pollinators, because the bee balm was abuzz all summer, and we had lots of visiting hummingbirds. So I am betting more on too much fertilizer, or too much heat. The garden got plenty of sun from eleven o’clock on, and the baking summer sun at that. Resolve: plant the seedlings earlier next year and actually analyze the soil.

We also over estimated the number of tomato plants that two people actually need. We started with a dozen small plants, but were clueless about how big they would get. It got Tokyo subway-crowded in that tiny little garden. There is science to be applied, and a lot of math, too, according to The Old Farmer’s Almanac: https://www.almanac.com/content/how-many-plants-do-you-need-your-space Resolve: fewer plants in 2019

We also planted the basil farm, which is our favorite ingredient, this side of garlic. We had half a dozen basil plants, which were well-tended and yielded a hefty amount of basil through the spring and summer. The plants were all pretty leggy when I finally paid attention to things, but I managed to fill a gallon-sized Baggie with fragrant basil leaves to tide us over the long winter months. I am going to pop in another couple of plants until the first frost wipes us out. You can never have too much basil. Resolve: more basil in 2019.

The row of nasturtiums was shiny and bright with color for a few weeks. The plants did not self-sow, which was a disappointment to my lazy soul, because I never remembered to plant any more nasturtium seeds. And my neighbor had mentioned once that she just loved nasturtiums. Resolve: be a better neighbor, and plant more nasturtiums.

Our one triumph was the pepper collection. We planted half a dozen, and every week something edible was harvested. There was the one Sunday when I flitted down to the garden to get a pepper for the scrambled eggs. It’s funny how the jalapeno peppers looked exactly like the sweet peppers. Those were some eye-opening eggs! Resolve: better pepper labels in 2019.

The peppers in the illustration are the last harvest of 2018, unless I run out to the garden center and get some more basil plants this afternoon. I think I will. There won’t be a frost for ages! And this little bit of gardening should satisfy my primal urge to dig in the dirt, until the spring bulbs I’ve ordered arrive.

“It was a beautiful bright autumn day, with air like cider and a sky so blue you could drown in it.”
― Diana Gabaldon