It’s a small world

The passport we’ve been waiting for, the one that’s been holding everything up, the only one left to come, just arrived in the mail 10 minutes ago! Much exultant whooping commenced, the little dog leapt, and the parents took up their phones to make calls they’d been waiting to make for weeks. Plan A is in motion!

On another New Zealand note, look what I found at my local little grocery store:

A graceful little bottle of olive oil from the very region we’re going to call home. Globalization, I think olives have long had a history with you. A. took a look at it and said, “There must have been really high shipping costs to get that all the way here. How much was shipping?” I made wide eyes at my savvy 2nd grader and told him I had no idea–it was on the shelf at Town and Country. Crazy, eh?

When I go to the Far North New Zealand Olive Oil Company’s website, I see that their North American retail outlets are all Seattle-area locations. Such luck!

Let’s take a closer look at this label:

What does J5 mean?

It’s a variety of olive. From www.devonolives.co.nz,
“J5 is sourced locally in the Far North but originally was introduced by the Dalmatian gum diggers who came to New Zealand from Croatia in the late 19th century. Milton Johnson, nurseryman, took cuttings from a 100 year old tree near Hokianga and developed the J1 through J5 cultivars which thrive in Northland. J5 produces a rich, golden, buttery oil full of flavour.”

I’ll add that it makes an amazing salad dressing whisked together with some fresh-squeezed lemon juice, some oregano, and some salt and pepper.

And a last NZ connection: My favorite author right now is Katherine Mansfield, who I started re-reading because she grew up in NZ and wrote about New Zealand life. She was writing long enough ago that her short stories are available free, online. Here’s one of my favorites, At the Bay, a good read-aloud to older children (at least my 14, 11, and 8-year old like it when I make them sit down and listen for a spell).

Olive oil, a passport, and stories, all at my fingertips. When I think about women’s lives all around the world, from long ago and currently, I feel so incredibly lucky.

Fifteen and change

Victoria Harbour B.C., taken upon waking really early.

Last week marked 15 years of marriage for us. There haven’t been many quiet years during that decade and a half!

Over the weekend, we reprised a trip to Victoria, B.C. that we took 10 years ago. This time we discovered another section of Victoria, Fernwood Square, 20 minutes of brisk walking from the tourist action. There’s a lovely converted church now in use as a playhouse:

The Belfry Theatre put on a really good production of The God of Carnage. The barfing was truly spectacular.

So traveling and finding food I could eat proved to be a little tricky. But for the most part, it worked. Sushi! Salad nicoise! Steak frites! Dark chocolate and strawberries!

Back on the home front, Auntie M and J were incarnations of Mary Poppins while we were gone–caring for the kiddos, taking them on outings, cooking, cleaning up for an open house, and all-around anxiety busters!

Welcome visit, Forbidden rice

A weekend visit from Auntie M and J = a fabulous dinner! Clean Eating provided the recipe for Thai Forbidden Rice salad with salmon (here’s a similar recipe).

A chilly pre-dinner stroll along Pritchard Park Beach.

The teenagers’ beach house, ever growing in fabulousness. A. discovered their stash of firewood this time.

Sleepless snow, feathered creatures

Sleepless at 3 am on Tuesday, I walked downstairs to make a cup of tea (sans glasses or contacts), and noticed the backyard absolutely glowing with brilliant moonlight. I walked outside to try to spy the moon, and stepped into snow on the deck. Oh! The brilliant light was snow glittering in moonlight. Magical. Come true morning, the snow still flocked trees and roofs.

Look at these gorgeous chickens, look at their gorgeous eggs. Go chickens, go!

Happy 5-month Birthday, or How to Enjoy a Lunch in Early March

1. Walk a mile with 3 kids plus one beautiful and outgoing puppy.
2. Order soup from Blackbird Bakery and eat it outside in the pedestrian zone.
(The tomato-artichoke soup with a GF herb roll is especially nice.)
3. Meet 20+ people who love Corgis and chatting.
4. Meet a family visiting Bainbridge for the day who get their beautiful 3-year-old Corgi out of their car to meet your puppy.
5. Meet a delightful and talented artist whose work is currently showing at the Director’s Gallery.
6. Meet a man who lived for a winter in Tasha Tudor’s house.
7. Take your dishes back into Blackbird, encourage the kids to view the sweets as an inspiration display for making their own treats later.
8. Walk a mile home in the crisp air and bright sunshine.

Dutch babies and skinny pants

Two new things in my life: puffed pancakes, aka Dutch babies, and super-soft skinny pants! How did I never know about the ease and deliciousness that is a strawberry-blueberry Dutch baby?

Skinny pants happened this way:
A. Took 13-yr-old K. on a mother-daughter shopping trip on Fat Tuesday
B. Dropped by a certain favorite store, sniffing out sales
C. Felt the lushness of Pilcro cords –and c’mon, they’re orange! Just right for making it through the depths of February.

Mochi Tsuki at IslandWood

Today’s mochi tsuki, or community mochi-making, was Bainbridge Island’s 23rd annual festival celebrating the Japanese new year with the chewy rice cakes, and it was a lark!

First, sweet glutinous rice is soaked overnight. Then it’s steamed in boxes and poured into a stone mortar. There it’s pounded with wooden mallets until it forms a sticky, elastic dough.

Inside the dining hall, we got to make our own mochi balls from the dough: starting with a twisted-off piece of rice dough, we stretched it to accommodate a ball of red bean paste and patted it into a sphere. Just slightly sweet but mostly very bland, quite tender and very chewy, mochi is a bit like a (healthier?)version of cookie dough–not really my cup of tea, but perfect as a once-a-year celebratory snack.

Seattle Kokon Taiko gave a great performance (we luckily got tickets for their last set of the day). Whatever is wrong, taiko makes it better, if only for the duration of the performance–the whole-body resonance it produces demands that you be fully present and leaves you feeling renewed, joyful, smiling.

On cookery and coughing

“Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food.”

So said Hippocrates. Except that was before Azithromycin. Actually, I still agree with Dr. H; it’s just that a good diet won’t unfailingly protect one from stress. I’ve had a pneumonia for 11 days now, and two days ago I caved and had B. pick up a Z-pak for me. Even more than usual, I have to watch what I eat, because antibiotics wreak havoc on the old digestive system.

As it happens, my 35-year-old digestive system has grown finicky and persnickety to the point where I can just feel it narrowing its eyes as I send nutrition down the chute. My kiddos love to list the foods I can’t tolerate anymore. I don’t know exactly why, but there is definitely a note of horrified glee as they add more to the list. Which brings me to cough drops.

How have I been suppressing this all-but-irrepressible cough? Why, Ricola, of course. And because I’ve been trying to use very little sugar, I bought a couple of bags of sugar-free cough drops. Oh, isomalt, you are not my friend. Sugar, you’re not looking so bad after all.

But you know what works pretty darn well as a cough suppressant? Ultra-strong peppermint tea. Use 3 teabags per 6 oz of water, and you’ve got yourself a brew that’ll rival any menthol-laced mountain herb drop. Sugar-free and isomalt free, too.

But woman cannot live on mint tea alone, so back to food:

In one household, we have: 2 gluten-intolerant people, 1 dairy-intolerant person, 1 soy-intolerant person, 2 vegetarians, 3 flexitarians, and 2 paleo/primal adherents. With 7 people total in the household, and exchange students/guests to accommodate, food is on my mind a fair amount.

It probably would be even more, if I didn’t have a schedule in place:

Sunday is Sunday brunch and soup night. Brunch either happens or doesn’t. When it does, it’s good, when it doesn’t, there’s wailing and gnashing to the moon. Come dinnertime, B is the soup-chef (sous chef is the kidlet who’s marked as Dinner Helper on the chore chart). The last time I tried to be soup chef (last Sunday night, when B. was out of town) utterly failed. As in, the pumpkin soup is still in the fridge 5 days later. It wasn’t from fresh butternut squarsh! The kids couldn’t palate canned pumpkin in their favorite Autumn soup, the little nose-upturners.

Monday is Indian food. I rotate among Gujerati green beans, spicy baked chicken, chana masala, coconut korma.

Tuesday alternates between baked potato bar with broccoli and baked sweet potatoes with kale salad.

Wednesday is stir-fry night. Usually super-simple with garlic and ginger and frozen vegetables.

Thursday is fish and salad bar. Baked cod, tilapia, sole, etc. and various fresh salads.

Friday is taco night.

Saturday is mixed grill. The standbys: Salmon, sausages, or other meat, asparagus, zucchini, mushrooms, bell peppers, eggplant.

We haven’t gotten tired of this rather pared-down menu schedule yet.

With all of the above said, I’m really looking forward to Adam Gopnik’s visit in 2 weeks. The Table Comes First, does it? Only if you’re well enough to enjoy it.

Late September Salad

Ingredients:
pea shoots (from peas planted 2 weeks ago)
spinach
nasturtiums (tastes like lettuce and radishes)
fairly green Bosc pear

Dressing:
a generous splash of sesame oil
juice from 1/2 a lemon
a dollop of maple syrup
a drizzle of soy sauce

Whisk together and toss with salad ingredients. Reminds me of the flavors in Wild Ginger’s Green Papaya Salad.

Four-berry Chutney

I’m calling my concoction a chutney because of the Indian-infused flavors, but it’s really a sauce. A glowing, garnet-hued, piquant sauce that’s equally good with chicken, turkey, or sweet potatoes.

The genesis was a bowl of edible goodies growing around my yard:
salal berries
blackberries
blueberries
chokecherries

The process:

1. Pick around 3 cups of berries
2. Add grated ginger (2 tsp.)
3. Give a generous shake of garam marsala (1 tsp.) (1)
4. A pinch of salt
5. Cook down in a saucepan, around 30 min.

Strain in a wire mesh strainer or a food mill. Cooled consistency will be a fine sauce, rather than a chunky chutney. It would work as a salad dressing too–conflated chutney!

(1) The garam masala I use includes cinnamon, cardamom, black pepper, cloves, cumin, and coriander.