Family | mulberryshoots

December 16, 2012

mince pies . . .

So today is Saturday and on a lighter note than in the past few posts, I’m going to describe the very cute mince pies that I made tonight. About a year ago, I was looking at the Williams Sonoma catalog which shows up pretty often. I usually avoid buying anything because the wares seem overpriced or meant for kitchens much more elaborate than mine. On that particular day though, I was taken by an appliance called the Breville pie maker. I had fantasies of making miniature chicken pot pies from leftovers, quick little apple pies for dessert from leftover fruit in the fridge.

I played around with it when it first arrived and then I put it on the back shelf in the pantry. I felt guilty about it a little bit but it wasn’t hundreds of dollars and I forgot about it. Over Thanksgiving, Read the rest of this entry »

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October 11, 2012

birthdays . . .

Yesterday, my mother-in-law and my husband G. celebrated their birthdays. He was born at five minutes to midnight and just made it under the wire on her birthday long ago. Among his other five siblings, his mother has always had a special place in her heart for him. We brought over the glass flutes for chilled Minuetto Prosecco along with some sparkling white grape juice to toast the birthday folks.

Six of us sat down to a lobster dinner, cooked and served with well-honed ceremony: testing that the lobsters were done by the sniff test taken on the landing looking into the kitchen. Expert chopping up of the cooked lobsters so that the meat was easy to extract from the shell. Boiling water was poured into bowls set with dishes on top containing warm, melted butter for tender morsels of lobster.

Afterwards, we were joined by more family and shared a birthday cake from a favorite bakery and then, taking turns, opened birthday cards. This is a family where cards are read aloud and savored. They are more important than anything, including gifts. Gram turned ninety-four yesterday and was in good spirits surrounded by her family. Nothing makes her happier than that. G. was in fine spirits too, taking good natured ribbing as everyone joined in the fun of getting together and telling stories about when they were kids.

More and more as time goes by, I am struck by how simple life can be. It almost feels like some kind of bell curve where things settle down to the essentials sooner or later: putting aside differences to be present at a celebratory dinner while birthday cards are read aloud. A good time was had by all.

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August 23, 2012

two sisters . . .

The other day, I had a chance to visit with two sisters via Skype, that wonderful new technology that allows us to see each other and visit via the Internet. The younger sister, who lives in Massachusetts, was visiting the older one who lives in Minneapolis with her daughter, Josie–that charmer toddler that you might have seen on some earlier posts and who is looking at the aquarium in the photo below.

Anyway, M. the older sister, had an aquarium when she was young and the younger sister, C., had just provided a new one for her since M. had lived in Japan for almost a decade and had then settled in Minneapolis two years ago. Apparently things have changed a lot in the aquarium world since M. was a kid. For example, there’s a Japanese guy named Takashi Amano who developed a kind of sea plant imagery culture in aquariums that has grown alongside the more conventional tanks filled with lots of fish swimming around.

M. has been very patient since she first received this new aquarium, setting up the water filtering system, waiting to study what plants might go together, hand-tying bits of moss cuttings that will eventually grow along the back of the aquarium. She has been waiting for C. to visit before going out together to buy a knife-ruffle fish last week, a nocturnal vision (youtube clip) that is amazingly graceful to behold. This week, they were excited about going out together to buy the first neons, nine of them and some shrimp to add to the acclimating tank.

Yesterday, they skyped me when they returned from the aquarium shop. Holding a bag of tiny tetras, M. gently scooped them up and deposited them into the aquarium, instant tiny schools of fish darted around. Today, M. told me the names of the shrimp and the neons. She said that she removes 60% of the water once a week in order to keep the water clear as a crystal. I asked her how she managed to siphon off that much water off the top without accidentally sucking up the tiny fish as well. She laughed and said she was careful.

Earlier in the day, we had visited on Skype when they had just finished doing workouts in the basement, taking showers and then settling down to make scrambled eggs for Josie and fruit smoothies for them all. It was fun to see them so happy just being together. They laughed when they told me about how they were going to watch a DVD on their new cable service the night before, but decided instead to lie on the bed and watch the aquarium instead.

And how do I know this and why am I so touched? Because these lovely sisters are my daughters, that’s why.

(These photos were taken by C. If you click on them, they will enlarge so that you can view them close-up.)
P.S. If you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the last photo, you’ll be able to see the knife-ruffle fish there too.

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August 18, 2012

bouquet . . .

Heavy rains falling in the night have become the norm here. Flashes of lightning that appear brighter and more ominous than their real distance occur a few times a week. We’re lucky to have the rain.

The garden is the better for it. . . although I noticed that the weeds have benefited from the rain as much as the flowering shrubs and bushes. After I put the laundry in this morning, I took my garden shears outside and looked around to see what I could find for a bouquet to grace our kitchen table.

Afterwards, I took the bag of Granny Smith apples and the corn on the cob that have been waiting patiently in the bottom of the fridge. I like cooking in the mornings during the summer. Before you know it, there’s dessert ready for dinner as well as some cornbread made with the corn, sliced off the cob cooked in a little butter with some chopped up green onions after it’s cooled. Will send some of the apple pie and the cornbread across the street to G.’s mother who is ninety-three.

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July 10, 2012

“shray jow” . . .

I have been making traditional Peking Ravioli dumplings for a long time, the wrappers from scratch. Somehow, I got it into my head to replicate a dumpling called “shray jow” (water dumplings) that I tasted at some dim sum parlors in the past. A few weeks ago while I was in the Asian market called “88” in Brookline, I came upon a stainless steel TWO-tiered steamer. Having cooked as much and as long as I have, it seemed a little late in the game to be buying one–but I didn’t have one and the generous sized kettle would also be perfect for dipping a Peking duck before hanging and roasting too. Or, for cooking lobsters! So I came home with it, and the search for a shray jow recipe that mirrored my memories began in earnest.

It never continues to amaze me that even when I have a shelf full of Chinese recipe books, that the one I’m looking for is not there. Online, I found so many variations that it wasn’t even funny–with really weird ingredients. Finally, after a couple of efforts where the taste was close but the texture was not, I came upon a recipe that worked. It involved chopping up the raw shrimp into a paste, adding sherry or rice wine and cornstarch to it, and flavoring the pork/shrimp mixture with oyster sauce after adding freshly chopped bamboo shoots, green onions and fresh ginger root.

So if you’re inspired to try it out yourself, here’s the recipe that I tweaked and sent to one of my daughters who wanted to make them after seeing these photos. I made them when my other daughter came to visit a week and a half ago.

shray jow recipe:

Use equal parts ground pork and shrimp. Buy large or extra large shrimp and clean the black lines on both sides of each shrimp–then chop them up until the shrimp is a paste. Add sherry or Chinese wine to the shrimp and a spoonful of cornstarch in a little chicken broth (or water.) Mix well together before you add the shrimp mixture to the pork. Chop up fresh bamboo shoots into very small dice and add; ditto green onions and fresh ginger root. Add a tablespoon or so of oyster sauce and mix well. Let sit in the fridge covered with plastic wrap.

Line a steamer plate with napa cabbage that is not wet. Take wonton wrappers (round ones) and wet half of the round, add filling, pinch together. Keep them covered with a cloth until they are all folded. Then place them on the cabbage–brush the dumplings with chicken broth or water or a combo–this is important or else the wrappers sometimes stay too dry and don’t get cooked enough. Bring water to a boil and steam the dumplings for about 15 minutes or until they look done.

Serve with dip: seasoned rice vinegar, soy, a little sugar, scallions, ginger, a little water and drops of sesame oil–stir well and serve.

Enjoy!

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May 30, 2012

still time . . .

Today, I came across an essay written by Marina Keegan, published in the Yale Daily News. It is inspirational to read and heartbreaking to realize that she died days after graduating from Yale.

After reading it, I believe that whatever our age is or where we are in life, there is still something to be done and to look forward to.

Here it is:

UNIVERSITY | 3:10 a.m. | May. 27, 2012 | By Marina Keegan
KEEGAN: The Opposite of Loneliness

The piece below was written by Marina Keegan ’12 for a special edition of the News distributed at the class of 2012’s commencement exercises last week. Keegan died in a car accident on Saturday. She was 22.

We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that’s what I want in life. What I’m grateful and thankful to have found at Yale, and what I’m scared of losing when we wake up tomorrow and leave this place.

It’s not quite love and it’s not quite community; it’s just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team. When the check is paid and you stay at the table. When it’s four a.m. and no one goes to bed. That night with the guitar. That night we can’t remember. That time we did, we went, we saw, we laughed, we felt. The hats.

Yale is full of tiny circles we pull around ourselves. A cappella groups, sports teams, houses, societies, clubs. These tiny groups that make us feel loved and safe and part of something even on our loneliest nights when we stumble home to our computers — partner-less, tired, awake. We won’t have those next year. We won’t live on the same block as all our friends. We won’t have a bunch of group-texts.

This scares me. More than finding the right job or city or spouse – I’m scared of losing this web we’re in. This elusive, indefinable, opposite of loneliness. This feeling I feel right now.

But let us get one thing straight: the best years of our lives are not behind us. They’re part of us and they are set for repetition as we grow up and move to New York and away from New York and wish we did or didn’t live in New York. I plan on having parties when I’m 30. I plan on having fun when I’m old. Any notion of THE BEST years comes from clichéd “should haves…” “if I’d…” “wish I’d…”

Of course, there are things we wished we did: our readings, that boy across the hall. We’re our own hardest critics and it’s easy to let ourselves down. Sleeping too late. Procrastinating. Cutting corners. More than once I’ve looked back on my High School self and thought: how did I do that? How did I work so hard? Our private insecurities follow us and will always follow us.

But the thing is, we’re all like that. Nobody wakes up when they want to. Nobody did all of their reading (except maybe the crazy people who win the prizes…) We have these impossibly high standards and we’ll probably never live up to our perfect fantasies of our future selves. But I feel like that’s okay.

We’re so young. We’re so young. We’re twenty-two years old. We have so much time. There’s this sentiment I sometimes sense, creeping in our collective conscious as we lay alone after a party, or pack up our books when we give in and go out – that it is somehow too late. That others are somehow ahead. More accomplished, more specialized. More on the path to somehow saving the world, somehow creating or inventing or improving. That it’s too late now to BEGIN a beginning and we must settle for continuance, for commencement.

When we came to Yale, there was this sense of possibility. This immense and indefinable potential energy – and it’s easy to feel like that’s slipped away. We never had to choose and suddenly we’ve had to. Some of us have focused ourselves. Some of us know exactly what we want and are on the path to get it; already going to med school, working at the perfect NGO, doing research. To you I say both congratulations and you suck.

For most of us, however, we’re somewhat lost in this sea of liberal arts. Not quite sure what road we’re on and whether we should have taken it. If only I had majored in biology…if only I’d gotten involved in journalism as a freshman…if only I’d thought to apply for this or for that…

What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over. Get a post-bac or try writing for the first time. The notion that it’s too late to do anything is comical. It’s hilarious. We’re graduating college. We’re so young. We can’t, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have.

In the heart of a winter Friday night my freshman year, I was dazed and confused when I got a call from my friends to meet them at EST EST EST. Dazedly and confusedly, I began trudging to SSS, probably the point on campus farthest away. Remarkably, it wasn’t until I arrived at the door that I questioned how and why exactly my friends were partying in Yale’s administrative building. Of course, they weren’t. But it was cold and my ID somehow worked so I went inside SSS to pull out my phone. It was quiet, the old wood creaking and the snow barely visible outside the stained glass. And I sat down. And I looked up. At this giant room I was in. At this place where thousands of people had sat before me. And alone, at night, in the middle of a New Haven storm, I felt so remarkably, unbelievably safe.

We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I’d say that’s how I feel at Yale. How I feel right now. Here. With all of you. In love, impressed, humbled, scared. And we don’t have to lose that.

We’re in this together, 2012. Let’s make something happen to this world.

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May 16, 2012

home again . . .

I’ve been visiting family who live in Minneapolis and have been away from home for a few days.

It’s been a time to get to know each other better, the little one playing with me on these last days rather than playing by herself in my presence.

Connection is an intangible spark, her eyes lighting up when she sees me after a nap. When I speak to G. on my cellphone, Josie listens intently to his voice and says softly, “hi, wa-wa.” After we hang up, she picks up the paw of her new stuffed puppy dog and waves goodbye at the cell phone, now still. These heart-filled moments float by like the flicker of light from lightning bugs on a soft, warm evening.

Life is indeed long, I think to myself, when we experience moments of sweet innocence and tender gestures of love by so young a spirit. Or maybe her spirit is wiser than her years.

We seem to go through many phases of our lives: starting out in a small place, wanting a bigger one, expanding and taking on more responsibilities and financial burdens. Then wanting to simplify, downsize and be in a smaller place again. The tide ebbs and flows along with our wishes and desires as time goes by. Health and illness also come and go. If we are fortunate, (and luck has a lot to do with how we fare along it seems,) we may live long enough to be in a soft place where children show us fundamentals we have forgotten about, or might never have had ourselves.

We make our own homes, wherever we happen to be. And I am glad to be returning to mine today even though I am leaving this sweet girl. It’s a good time to celebrate that slice of innocent joy when I return to my own place, home again.

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April 30, 2012

pouf . . .

During our visit with Josie at the cottage, there was a well-loved old Moroccan leather hassock that we usually kept on its side near the television. It was about fourteen inches high and twenty inches in diameter, just the right proportions to support Josie’s frame. We tried encouraging her to sit in a child’s chair but to no avail. Left to her own devices, however, Josie made the leather pouf her own.

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April 26, 2012

spring cleanup . . .

Even though it’s been unseasonably warm this winter moving into spring, I’m catching up on some spring cleaning this week. I’ve been meaning to clean up the plant shelf where G. had brought up some gorgeous dusty rose marble planks to provide a surface for the orchids. They’ve been coming along and their bloom is still approaching its peak.

I had a grocery bag full of clippings and dead leaves from the plants, especially the maidenhair fern which had nasty, dried-up brown fronds.

maidenhair fern after repairs

I also noticed that the overheating going on inside me has abated with the wise treatments given yesterday by C., my gifted Shiatsu practitioner. A levelling and cooling off that feels really calming and steady. By next week, some ceiling repair around the skylights and painting will take place in the kitchen and living area. Benjamin Moore’s “Navajo White” paint is my favorite color and has followed me from place to place wherever I have lived. The storage closets will be cleaned out altogether and organized so that we can find cottage and Christmas things more easily. My plan is to provide a swift exit for anything that we won’t use and that we don’t need. Outdated books and CDs will be donated to the local library. E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G that remains will have its place. It has already begun to look more spare and feels as right as rain.

To top it all off, here is a photo of little Josie, lending a hand to vacuum the floor at the cottage the day that we left. Priceless!

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April 20, 2012

wonder girl . . .

Okay, so after all the grousing that I’ve been doing about thick, sticky life dramas, here is a refreshing respite. Josie came to visit and brought us a time in her world of wonder. Baby yogurt, noodle soup, smoothies, big strawberries, bubbles and a mindful presence way beyond her age of 19 months.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so here are some that show the wonder of life in its simplest forms.

Enjoy!

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Category: Family