How to "Pie Up!" in the Pantry

From my vintage postcard collection.

Yesterday I cooked another large second turkey, just because it was at the bottom of the freezer. Time to "pantry up," as my friend Edie recently said (and "freezer up," too). Throughout the busy week ahead the juicy 25+ free ranger, from an Amish farm last winter, will be transformed into turkey salad, turkey soup, turkey pie, creamed turkey and sandwiches. [One reason is because I have an article deadline on December 1st and many book orders to process].

Today I'll be making turkey tetrazzini, with roasted beets and parsnips on the side and more rhubarb and pumpkin pies. We're having our Mennonite friends Melvin and Anna Hurst over for a Sunday supper of "leftovers" (well, not really, but that was the premise) later this afternoon and I'm looking forward to a nice leisurely "catch up" as I haven't seen either of them in a month. I'd even intended to host a "leftover" potluck for friends last night but it just never materialized.

As for food this Thanksgiving, back to our "simplicity" kick. I didn't make homemade cranberry sauce this year, or homemade rolls, or even cranberry nut bread. But the stuffing was arguably my best yet––from a recipe I came up with in college that I've been tweaking for the past 30 years. This year I added dried cherries and chopped pecans, as well as the Italian sausage, chopped apples and fresh cranberries that I have always included.

© Anne Taintor, Inc.

But we also had P I E! Homemade! By me! I say this so enthusiastically, and with great unabashed pride in my heart, because I've always had pie phobia–big time. The fillings are never the problem, it's the crust. Usually it is the one thing I ask guests to bring at Thanksgiving: dessert (and dessert at Thanksgiving usually equals pie). A few weeks ago my friend Rosemary back in New Hampshire sent me a pie dough recipe she had tweaked from Joanne Chang's Flour Bakery in Boston. It was the best pie dough, and easiest, I've made yet. If it sounds like there is a lot of butter, there is: but you're worth it (Rosemary also added a few more tablespoons to the original recipe). Rosemary, I should also add, was the frequent pie lady at our house (as well as my friend Linda, but I don't want to start a pie war between these two friends!).

Rhubarb pie awaits baking on Thanksgiving morning.

Rosemary's Second Amazing(ly Simple) Pie Dough

[Here is her first recipe: click here for blog archive!]

• 1 cup flour

• 1/2 tsp salt

• 10 Tbsps cold butter

• 1 egg yolk

• 2 Tbsps milk

Eli loves to help.

Put flour and salt into food processor, with blade (I used my plastic blade). Add cold butter, one tablespoon at a time, while pulsing. I combined the egg yolk and milk in a bowl and beat it quickly before adding to the flour-butter mixture in the food processor. Pulse all ingredients a few times until mixed and turn out onto floured board. Knead and flip several times and press with the back of your palm. (Rosemary said this is called "fraisaging" the dough–rhymes with "massage" and that's exactly what you are doing.) Then pat into a disk, wrap tightly in plastic wrap, and chill for at least an hour. The chilling is absolutely essential for ease of roll and a resulting flaky crust. [I doubled this for a 2-crust dough and you can also freeze your disks of dough for another day.]

A perfect pie trifecta!

When sufficiently chilled, roll out dough disk on a floured board to the desired size. You will find, having chilled it, that it will roll very nicely and should feel all satiny to the touch. After it bakes, your pie will have the flakiest, melt-in-your mouth flavor and texture. I can't wait to try it with turkey pot pie later this week! As much as I like Rosemary's other pie recipe, I might just be a convert to this one.

Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie is akin to sacrilege.

I Tremble With Gratitude

In recent years our table has been a "groaning board" of good friends, our immediate family and beloved kin who "enter and pass among us in living love and in memory." As one of my friends likes to say, "as we get older, we make our own family."

Yesterday, a quote I posted by Wendell Berry on "pacifist chickens" led to all sorts of other great quotes over on Facebook. One of my favorite readers of this blog (and a local friend on Facebook and in person, even though we have met only a handful of times) shared a favorite quote with me. It turns out it is an entire poem from Berry's Leavings collection. If you have never read Wendell Berry in any genre, you can't go wrong with anything he writes: he is one of our finest environmental essayists, poets and novelists and he happens to live and farm here in Kentucky where he was born and raised. His essays have always been ahead of their time and they speak of sustainability, the dangers of living outside of our means, of the beauty and power of simplicity and honoring our land. He is like a humble sage of our time, quite unknown by those who should know of him, beloved by those who do.

Wendell Berry–a man of letters and the land.

The owner of an independent bookstore group, Willard Williams of The Toadstool back in New Hampshire, said he always judges a bookstore by its inclusion of Wendell Berry in the poetry, novel, philosophy, environment and essay sections. When I read this poem today it reminded me of my "Sunday Dinners" blog post, below, and the poem that inspired it, the other day. It is also of note that Berry composed the poems in Leavings on a series of Sabbaths over the course of several years. The Sabbath is something we are trying to better honor in our family, returning it to what it should be: a completely suspended day of only essential work but more importantly, to have fellowship with our family, friends and our spiritual selves. To find the quiet within the center of who we are or the place around us and then to carry that into the rest of our week. There is just too much pace and not enough pause in our world any more.

Not having read Leavings, I can only assume that the poems are, as this one is, the best kind of prayer or spiritual moment, perhaps Berry's own benedictions:

VIII.

I tremble with gratitude
for my children and their children
who take pleasure in one another.

At our dinners together, the dead
enter and pass among us
in living love and in memory.

And so the young are taught.

~ Wendell Berry [From Leavings, Counterpoint Press: 2009]

Keeping Vigil

I haven't written much about our neighbor Ida and her farm because, well, I'm probably leery of writing too much about other people here or their stories. Or perhaps it is because I have not wanted to intrude or that it is all just too close to home in the literal sense. PHOTO–Ida has always been proud of her hollyhocks and blackberries. These have always flourished on the east side of her house and she made sure I got some seeds this summer.

We we took a real shine to Ida when we first met her two years ago in her board-and-batten farmhouse across the road from our doublewide farm property and the "knob piece." My husband, being a generally more knock-on-the-door and say "Hi-ya" kind of guy than I, paved the way for our friendship.


"House when new" and Ida's sister, Maythel, c. 1940 (not certain of photo dates)

Mr. and Mrs. Walter (Bannie) Dye (Ida's parents) and their three youngest children (some of Ida's siblings): Pete, Dickie and Maythel with the guitar.

She immediately reminded us of our dear neighbor and friend, Dot Grim, who had lived across the street from us in New Hampshire (and sadly died only a few weeks before we moved to Kentucky). They were both feisty women in their late 80s who lived their lives their way, inspiring in me a kind of awestruck admiration. One day, during the fall when we moved our things and I was cleaning house in advance of the moving truck, Ida brought me a pile of huge tomatoes that she had grown as a housewarming gift. "How are you today, Ida?" I asked. "As mean as ever!" she said with an impish grin. It seemed you always knew where you stood with Ida and that's a rare and welcome thing.


Ida's brother Dickie with his horses, Dock and Dan and Ida's mother, Bannie Dye.

Another time I was sharing with her some concerns about someone who was always talking about how Christian they were, but yet there was something I didn't quite trust about them. Ida's answer was the wisest counsel I've heard on the subject: "Do they walk the walk?" I said I wasn't sure–I only knew them at our house when they did some work on the place. "Well, that's what matters–if they spend too much time talking, they probably aren't doing a whole lot of walking!" Ida told us how the three Baptist churches on the ridge used to baptize people down on the creek below. I always looked forward to spending more time with Ida but in this past year she has been in Tennessee for much of the time. She was independent, too, and you have to respect when someone wants to do for themselves so we tried not to intrude too often, and usually only when asked. This fall she often liked to spend time at my husband's shop having coffee with him. She loved it when our boys mowed her lawn and insisted on paying them something, even if they refused.


"Stock barn and Pap's wagon" [sadly, we had to tear the barn down last year as it was ready to fall down and needed too much work to be righted again.] We will one day build our farmhouse to the rear left of it. Now, with the barn gone, the famous "short-core" apple tree is in full view, a kind of indigenous old heirloom apple that even Kentucky novelist Janice Holt Giles wrote about.

In 2008 before Thanksgiving and after we had been here a year, Ida's daughter–who lives out of state and had bought the farm from her mother about ten years ago–approached us about buying the farm from her. We couldn't believe it as we'd often thought to ourselves, "maybe one day, wouldn't it be nice..." So much land here is sold at "Absolute Auction" where it is subdivided and often split up in rancorous battles between families, which is sad and demeans the spirit of the land. We had left our own family farm situation back home in irreparable shambles after trying to carry on with the legacy, and yet had purposefully left the land as intact as we could, even getting protective conservation easements. We sensed that Ida's daughter wanted the same kind of thing for her family farm and have come to know that with certainty.


"Dempsey Dye–their home place at the end of the long field."

Ida's daughter knew we were planning to have a cattle farm here and she came to the realization that, apart from the occasional visit, she would not be living here enough to justify owning it any more. As her daughter had done, we gave Ida life estate of her home and nearby in the past year we have built a shop and woodshed. It is on her farm where we will eventually build our own farmhouse. The land sits across the road from our knob pasture and doublewide home and so we've joined, effectively, two old ridge farms together.


"Brooder house and Grandma's (Bannie's) chickens across the drive near the corner of road and drive." (person unidentified–our shop is now at this location as the brooder house is long gone)

When we saw Ida on Saturday, in a local nursing home, I was stunned by the change in her, and so quickly. We last saw her two months ago, before she returned to Tennessee where she has another house, and the place hasn't been the same without her around. All she could say when she saw us was, faintly, "It's all going to be beautiful." And she said my name, repeating it as if to place me. She smiled when I told her that our boys were there, too, and that they'd been taking care of her golf cart. And yet I wasn't certain she knew who we were.


"Grandma's (Bannie's) chickens and yard (and) barn before wings were added."

Before Ida headed south for the holidays two months ago, my husband drove her around the farm, showing her what we had done to restore the fields and hedgerows. She told him, repeatedly, "Pap would be so pleased with what you have done." Over the past two years she has pointed out old places, like the "pennywinkle spring" (pennywinkle is another name for vinca or myrtle which grows wild in the woods here) where the neighbors used to gather for water and gossip, the various houses on the ridge where she has lived, of the ghosts that have visited them from time to time. In the past few years Ida has shared many stories about the farm and I always wanted to hear more (fortunately some are written down and my husband has a great memory for the spoken word). She told us how they stored the apples from the "short-core" tree out back (under where our dog Lucy is now buried) in the haymow and how they kept through the winter until the spring. She shared some darker stories, too, of harder times and circumstances. Ida did not always live on the ridge, and for many years as far away as Chicago, but she came home to it again. Her brother Dickie, for a time, lived up the road in a small house on the farm.


"Dock and Dan and Pete?"

This morning we learned that Ida's grandson had been visiting before we were there on Saturday. He was telling her about the farm and commented on the changes we had made and about the fencing and cleaning up here and there that we'd done this fall. So Ida's daughter believes that she did know who we were and that she was talking about the farm when she said, "It's all going to be beautiful." I'd like to think, too, perhaps, that she might have already been catching glimpses of a world beyond as I've seen it in people before they pass on, as if they are straddling two realms of existence. Now her family waits by her side or in their thoughts and prayers. As her daughter said this morning, "Mother has always known how to live her life." But it is never easy to let someone go and getting older myself doesn't make that any easier.


"Front yard looking east." Apart from the gate and the tree in the foreground, this view hasn't changed at all.

Today, in a strange kind of epiphany and after a week of some occasional doubt and a bit of holiday homesickness, I realized why we are here in Kentucky (a question people often ask of us): I believe now it is to keep Ida's home fires burning, even if we could not tend to our own, try as we might, back in New Hampshire. This was a gift, beyond any measure or real estate transaction: Ida and her daughter have allowed us the opportunity to create our own family homeplace, our own roots on an old family farm in Kentucky, a place where only a few years ago we knew no one. It is our own slice of heaven in a strife-filled world–without the chords of upset and baggage, while cared for with our best intentions.

Dear Ida–we will miss your spirit and your warm welcome to our family here on your ridge: to your land, your farm, your Kentucky homeplace. We will always try our best to honor what you and your family have kept here–intact and well-loved–while cherishing it ourselves. We now have a chance to be caretakers of another family legacy, while also making it our own. This I am sure about–we never really own the land beneath us, except on paper, but the land has a way of binding us to it.

Postscript. This morning, Wednesday, I learned that early Tuesday evening, January 4, 2010, Ida Elizabeth Doyle, passed away. She was 88. Here is her obituary and it reads, in part, "She was born on her parents, Walter and Bannie Dye, farm on May 23, 1921 in what is now Nancy, KY and returned back here in the 1970s. Ida was widely traveled but loved the home place best, perhaps because she intimately knew every tree, stone, spring, and field."

The Gift Outright

The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
in Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England's, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.

~ Robert Frost

NOTE on Photos: To best appreciate this you have understand that my office is an absolute wreck and I'm not kidding (think Hoarders kind of wreck). So today, when thinking about blogging this entry as I do not have a photograph of Ida, I remembered the copies of old photos of the farm that Ida's daughter had given us and I thought, "Where must they be? I only saw them a few weeks ago..." But a few weeks in a cluttered office, especially at the holidays, is like a small epoch. Before two minutes had passed I had found them: my intuition told me to look in a box to the right of my desk, and there they were. In another pile I have transcriptions of many of Ida's old farm and ridge memories that her daughter wrote down several years ago. With her daughter's permission, I might share some of them here from time to time.

Old Order Health Care

Last night, over in Crab Orchard, we attended a benefit turkey dinner for Mervin Miller, a thirtysomething Amishman who has leukemia and mounting health bills. The tack shop where the event was held at a large hillside farm was transformed into a mobile kitchen of a hundred women with pressure cookers and pie racks and loaves of bread and roast turkeys in foil-covered roasters. All week they had been preparing different parts of the meal from their home kitchens. "Everybody does their part," said one woman. For us it was like attending a big communal Thanksgiving dinner a few weeks early. "HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL"–An old abandoned schoolhouse near Holmes County, Ohio–home of world's largest Amish community • Spring 2006

People lined up to get in the door and once inside, the buffet line went like a well-oiled system. [Judging from the crowd at the auction and dinner there must have been over five hundred people.] We were handed a divided plate on a tray and paid our "donation." No specific fee was charged and those who do this at benefits tell me they end up receiving more donations than they might have anyway. There is something about paying what you can that is a very powerful gesture: it taps into one's primal good nature.

Then, bonnet-clad women piled turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, corn and beans on our plates. A helpful Amish man pointed to the dessert table where there were several kinds of pie and cranberry relish (I chose the date pudding and relish and later had a taste of peanut butter pie from my friend Anna's tray). Everything was homemade and there were huge decanters of fresh-brewed coffee and chests of soda "pop" and bottled water. On the tables were sliced loaves of homemade bread, butter and a potentially addictive peanut butter-Fluffer Nutter® mix. PHOTO: Hoosier cabinet at the Yoder Amish Farmhouse bakery, Holmes County, Ohio • Spring 2006

Pies at my friend Anna's sister's house in Missouri • May 2009

After the meal we were glad to catch up with some friends in both communities–many had traveled by van from Casey County and a busload came all the way from Christian County. At 6:30 the auction began. On the way in I had made the mistake of looking the Jersey steer in his big dreamy doe eyes, knowing my husband would bid on him for our freezer. The deal was that whomever bid on the four quarters (we got the whole cow in the end) would also have butchering included by Joe Yoder at J&V Slaughterhouse (which is how we had heard about the benefit supper in the first place: please see my previous blog entry, "Crab Orchard").

I should explain because, silly me (and this is just how my odd mind works), I thought that you literally got a quarter of a cow ("I choose front right flank!") but no, they said that the processed meat would be divided four ways. [I should also add here that we've been going great guns with cattle fencing on at least part of our farm so that we can proceed with raising our own cattle: this strikes many chords of both carnivore and animal-loving hypocrisy in me, but more about that another time. Let's just say this winter I look forward to reading both Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals as well as the soon to be released Cleaving by Julie Powell–here is her post-Julie and Julia blog. I should also continue onward through Michael Pollan's brilliant writing on the food we eat (and other topics).]

The idea of having grass-fed healthy beef (not certified organic but for all intents and purposes that way) in our freezer this winter for about $2.50 a pound average (and that includes all of the good cuts and ground beef–not the extra organs and bits) was too good to pass up, as was the chance to help someone in need. Of course, now we will have to buy another freezer but we were planning on doing that anyway. [Our cow will be dressed out at likely about 350 pounds–we have to work out the particulars with the butcher but in the meantime, the cow is on a Crab Orchard pasture at the farm where he was raised and will be delivered to the butcher in another month. Right now I'm thinking of delicious roast beef with suet reserved for the Yorkshire Pudding at our traditional Christmas dinner: and lots of suet for bird feeders this winter, too. But I'm also thinking of that Jersey steer. I do love animals so how can I care for them and also eat them without issue?]


Amish buggies at an Adair County Kentucky benefit sale • Spring 2008

So here is Old Order Amish and Mennonite health care in a nutshell: most pay into a larger fund that assists people with aid for basic procedures or needs. When more costly or prolonged health care is required for a person or family (say if their house or barn is destroyed: as they don't believe in property insurance, either), the individual communities pull together to organize benefits like these. "God will provide," seems to be the unwritten motto, but so will the community. I should also point out that Old Order Amish and Mennonite groups do not pay into, or take away, from Social Security or Medicare, either, and farm subsidies are also refused. It goes without saying that they never accept welfare because the community will provide for those in need (and I have yet to not meet a hardworking man or woman from these groups–my Mennonite women friends spin circles around me!).

As for their health, they believe in personal accountability and practicing a healthy lifestyle: chiropractors and different treatments of naturopathy and herbal medicine are often used and they mostly eat what they raise, grow or bake from scratch and there is something in that notion. Clean living. Hard work. Good eating. It's the way that most of us used to live, or subsist, before we became couch potatoes and computer junkies. Their strong sense of community, and keeping the modern world at bay (or at least tuning out aspects of it), is exactly what has kept their culture, language and strong faith going on into the 21st century. I'm not saying it's a perfect or Utopian society by any stretch–whatever is?–but there are so many aspects of it from which I think we "English" can always learn. PHOTO: Caps "for sale"! Well, not really. Photo of Mennonite hats and a coat taken at our shop "frolic" back in February–also on a Friday the 13th now that I check this blog entry!

The men ran the auction, gathered and organized items for sale, and there were many amusing volunteer auctioneers from within the community and also outside of it. The offerings included many donated items liked baked and canned goods (I bid on some of that homemade white bread to take home), tools, a few quilts, hay, split cord wood, porch swings, tack, and other items. I had wanted to bid on a case of homemade ketchup but we decided not to stay into the wee hours as we had an hour's drive home.


Corn shocks along South Fork Creek in Casey County • Fall 2009

So with full bellies and the prospect of a full freezer, we drove a few of our Mennonite friends home, back to our part of Kentucky. They sang a special "Happy Birthday" song to our son Henry, who will be 12 in a few days. [I need to write down the words and it is also a lovely tune: a few weeks ago my friends also sang it to me when they surprised me with a gorgeous cake, at a quilting my daughter and I attended–more on that soon as it is, for now, a "secret"...] Then we all sang some hymns. Ammon even yodeled. It was a thankful and contented carload as we drove on winding country roads to our homes in the balmy November night, a whole big sky of stars twinkling.

All Souls' Day

Late October and November, before the holiday frenzy, has become one of my favorite times of the year. After the leaves have fallen, the wood stoves have been fired, wood is gathered, pantries are filled and root cellars stuffed–it is a time of abundance and plenty and feeling secure. Yet I realize that many do not have full bellies or full larders and granaries. But it is as much a psychic and soul-filling, too. When the Earth starts its tilt away from the sun in the Northern Hemisphere, I can also feel myself begin to tilt inward, too. I used to fear this, to know the dark was coming and that with it would my mood change, sometimes perilously. Now I welcome this time of the year just as I am learning to better welcome each new phase of my life, each circumstance.

For some reason, be it a busy October (so busy I realize a month has passed without my even blogging!) or a wonder hormone creme (hey, I just turned 47 a few days ago and I plan to absolutely crow about this waning time of fertility, rather than to fear it), I've managed to still retain my gregarious nature that often emerges in the spring, unloosed again like Persephone.

I just had my own Persephone experience. Our 21-year old daughter visited for two weeks in the latter part of October, between the end of her summer job and start of her winter one, both at the same New England resort. We had so much fun and needed "girl time" (hens don't always qualify). But on Friday I had to send her back again to the world and this time around it was a more secure feeling in doing so. I admire her independence and resolve and sometimes feel as if I have forgotten my own–not hard to do as a wife and mother.

In the meantime, All Souls' Day (traditionally November 2nd) or All Saints' Day, November 1st, is a time that was always celebrated in the Episcopal church where I spent my formative years. It is a day when we honor those who have departed, also known as "The Day of the Dead" in Spanish-speaking countries (or "I Morti" in Italy). Halloween, in its ancient sense, is the day when the spirits of the dead are supposed to be wandering the Earth unbridled and the juxtaposition with a religious feast day on All Saints' is interesting.

So today I especially remember:

Louise Truslow Grummon, Robert Morgan Grummon, Daniel Neal Grummon, Joannna Grummon Dotchin, Harriet Manton Seiberling, James Penfield Seiberling, James Henry Seiberling, Mary Seiberling Chapman, Elizabeth Yates McGreal, Edith Sloane, Waty Taylor, Walter and Dorothy Grim, Bill and Martha Bradley, John and Elizabeth Sanderson, Shirley Davison and other dear friends and family who have passed on. [Also, beloved pets over the years, including most recently, Lucy and Patch.]

At this time of year I also begin a period of winter reflection, a time spent closer to hearth and home, freer time to write and think. I plan to use the next six months for so much "inner work," including more writing (and more regular blogging again, too). We have just enough winter here to feel tucked in and cozy on a raw day of rain, ice or a bit of flying snow. Our late Kentucky autumn foliage is enough of a pageant to feel fall-ish and then we are honored by an early spring that begins in March and is full blown in April. Then by May 1st, May Day, like Persephone and the emergent spring, I am ready to return from the underworld of my own psyche and live above ground for a while with the land of the living.

I've learned to embrace this time of year, this more inward time, rather than to fear it. I am glad to be a Halloween baby, too (even if I jumped it by two days). Just imagine the children's birthday parties I had! The ease of witch references! As much as I am spiritual and at home with much religious liturgy, I also embrace my inner (good) witch, too.

NOTE ON PAINTINGS: All Saints' Day (Le jour des mort) by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1859) and two paintings of Persephone by Pre-Raphaelite painter, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1874), and Thomas Hart Benton (1939).

The Last Watermelon Days of Summer

This August we didn't eat as much watermelon as I'd hoped with all of that mess and cutting–but were encouraged by a study in July that said that watermelon actually boosts metabolism because it is arginine-rich. We still have some held back in the mud room that we can refrigerate and enjoy throughout the month. Most Old Order Mennonite farmers in Casey County grow acres of watermelon and cantaloupe to sell at their produce stations, auction and even Walmart: cantaloupes (or "mush melons" as they are often called here, and they do get mushy–for more on how I found that out, read here) are picked in July and watermelons throughout August. It seems that watermelon is just a part of summer and here in Kentucky they grow them big and in abundance. There is nothing like getting a watermelon fresh out of the patch, throwing it in the fridge or on the cellar floor, and eating it whole hog.



This was the second year that we helped with the melon harvest at our friends' farm. Mostly my husband and boys–but I did a bit of melon washing and some of the noon dinners–and Henry often drove the horse-drawn wagon as he did last summer, too. August arrived hot and humid after a cool and rainier June and July (which actually had affected some of the melons) so the shady shelter of their sorting shed was welcome.

I've heard that in meteorological world that the seasons are divided as follows: September-November (Autumn), December-February (Winter), March-May (Spring), June-August (Summer). This seems to jive more with our weather patterns although, light levels aside, summers are long in Kentucky and winters are shorter and more like one extended New England November. With Labor Day weekend upon us, I wanted to blog about watermelon and savor, a bit, our August days spent harvesting and eating it.

Enjoy this last official weekend of summer with your friends and family. Around here it seems to be a traditional family reunion and homecoming time, which makes me rather envious and homesick for something, apart from my immediate brood, that I no longer have in the real kinfolk sense of things. So embrace your loved ones and hold them close as you hunker in for a fall and winter ahead or send your wee ones off for another year of school or college–but first make sure to have one last wedge of watermelon! [And to my dear departed Dad, a Happy 73rd birthday and I hope the heavenly choirs were in full tilt today and that your celestial organ is cranking.]



What follows is a series of photos on the watermelon process–from field to bin–as well as a recipe from a friend for "Watermelon Coolers." There are also some poems (so don't forget to scroll all the way to the bottom of this blog posting for those extra goodies).













There was a favorite poem about watermelons that Mrs. Ann Royce read to us in middle school English (and that we had to write an essay about, I'm almost certain) back in the mid-1970s at St. Patrick's School in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, and where I attended for 7th and 8th grade after moving from Ohio. Perhaps you, too, remember reading the poem in your English class?

This was the title poem to an anthology of poetry for young adults, Reflections On A Gift Of Watermelon Pickle (published in 1967 and still in print after all of these years–I have just ordered one for our son Henry's 12th birthday in November and one more for another friend's son). According to the book notes, Tobias' poem was originally published in the New Mexico Quarterly in 1961. I remember how that book helped bring the power of poetry to me for the first time: the revelation of how words, when combined, can be like luscious pairings–a good recipe. And watermelon can still bring out the child in all of us. [NOTE: The photos of our two boys, with a friend, below were taken in May 2006 at our house in New Hampshire–a perfect early summer day with friends...but I'm guessing the watermelon was an import!]

Reflections of a Gift of Watermelon Pickle Received from a Friend Called Felicity

by John Tobias

During that summer
When unicorns were still possible;
When the purpose of knees
Was to be skinned;
When shiny horse chestnuts
(Hollowed out
Fitted with straws
Crammed with tobacco
Stolen from butts
In family ashtrays)
Were puffed in green lizard silence
While straddling thick branches
Far above and away
From the softening effects
Of civilization;

During that summer–
Which may never have been at all;
But which has become more real
Than the one that was–
Watermelons ruled.

Thick imperial slices
Melting frigidly on sun-parched tongues
Dribbling from chins;
Leaving the best part,
The black bullet seeds,
To be spit out in rapid fire
Against the wall
Against the wind
Against each other;

And when the ammunition was spent,
There was always another bite;
It was a summer of limitless bites,
Of hungers quickly felt
And quickly forgotten
With the next careless gorging.

The bites are fewer now.
Each one is savored lingeringly,
Swallowed reluctantly.

But in a jar put up by Felicity,
The summer which maybe never was
Has been captured and preserved.
And when we unscrew the lid
And slice off a piece
And let it linger on our tongue:
Unicorns become possible again.

You might also remember this poem from the same anthology:

How to Eat a Poem by Eve Merriam

Don't be polite.
Bite in.
Pick it up with your fingers and lick the juice that
may run down your chin.
It is ready and ripe now, whenever you are.

You do not need a knife or fork or spoon
or plate or napkin or tablecloth.

For there is no core
or stem
or rind
or pit
or seed
or skin
to throw away.


"Watermelons ruled...
Thick imperial slices
Melting frigidly on sun-parched tongues
Dribbling from chins;
Leaving the best part...


...The black bullet seeds,
To be spit out in rapid fire
Against the wall
Against the wind
Against each other..."
[from The Gift of Watermelon Pickle by John Tobias]


"Don't be polite.
Bite in.
Pick it up with your fingers and lick the juice that
may run down your chin."
[from How to Eat a Poem]
















And finally, here is an easy recipe for Watermelon Coolers that my friend Rosemary sent along. They are light and refreshing. Sugar is optional as is the extra addition of water which I found made it a bit too liquid. You could also add rum, gin or any bit of clear alcohol or ginger-ale in place of the water:

• 3 cups diced watermelon (preferably cold)
• 2 Tbsps. lime juice
• 1 Tbsp sugar (optional, or add sweetener)
• 1 cup crushed ice (or throw in a few cubes)
• 1/2 cup water (this, too, is optional)

Put all ingredients in blender and blend until smooth. Pour into glasses and garnish with fresh mint sprig or lime wedge. Makes 4 cups or two big servings.

Summer in a glass! Farewell!