I took these photos over Thanksgiving when we were all too wrecked to do much more than doze on various sofas in front of various football games.
Eight or so years ago that would have been our son asleep in Neel's lap. Not our beagle.
I can't remember an autumn or winter when my family didn't roast chestnuts. They're staples of our holiday meals. We can't have a turkey without chestnut stuffing, it seems. My dad developed a whole system of preparing them that's my favorite even now. For Christmas one year I got a chestnut roaster and cookbook, but it broke (the roaster, not the cookbook) during one of the phases of our recent kitchen/hallway renovation (almost done!). And honestly, I was almost relieved. I liked that roaster, really, I did, but it presented us with a whole new way of preparing the chestnuts, and while they were tasty, I'm just not sure I liked them as much as the old way.
Our old way is, admittedly, labor intensive for a snack. It's an all day proposition, so it's best to do it on a cold or rainy Sunday when you have a few football games stretching in front of you.
First you score your chestnuts. Most of the packaging will tell you to do it on the flat side, but I have best success at the tip. Then you put them in a pot, with water to cover and set them to boil for at least twenty minutes. The longer you boil them, the easier they are to peel. You may have to add water as it boils off. After the skins have softened, pour off the hot water, rinse and cover with cold and take off the heat.
Now the fun begins! Time to peel. It's best to do this with company. My dad and I always did it together, and at holidays my grandad would help. Neel doesn't generally eat chestnuts (what's wrong with him?!), so I can't really strong-arm him into the peeling, but Callum does. I think ten is high time to join the family tradition. It's hard on your hands, this part. Your fingers will get wrinkly from the water and your thumbs will get sore under the nail from peeling of the papery part of the skin. Chestnut peeler's thumb is an occupational hazard, I'm afraid.
After peeling, break the chestnuts into smaller pieces and place in a small, heavy pan for roasting. I use a glazed, ceramic dish with a lid, but you could even use a pie dish if pressed. Salt and dot the chestnuts (liberally) with butter and place in a 350 degree oven for... awhile. Hmmm. Twenty to thirty minutes, maybe? Until they're done, really. See photo above. They'll soften and absorb the butter. Finally it's time to eat. Dig into the deliciousness and enjoy the fruits of your labor.
We're planning on chestnuts for our Christmas dinner this year. Chestnut stuffed pork loin, based on a meal I had in Hungary. Hungarians use a lot of chestnuts in their cooking and even leave the nuts as small offerings on the grave markers of their saints. My dad and I have agreed that if you have multiple, additional steps in your recipe, it's permissible to use pre-peeled chestnuts. But only then. My cookbook gathers dust, generally. I'm a purist at heart.
Nothing chases the clouds away like, well, like the sun. But also like lunch with friends.
From the gorgeous box, to artfully arranged condiments...
... to the conversation and laughter that had no end. You guys could start or end my week anytime. Just the ray of sunshine I needed.
We were off having fun, playing Nerf gun tag in the dark, while our neighbors had bigger concerns. Friday morning revealed more damage than we'd expected.
Neighbors across the street woke to find a divet in their driveway next to their eighty foot oak that hadn't been there before. We waited all day, sick feelings in the pits of our stomachs, for the busy tree guys to come as we watched that gorgeous old oak lean towards another neighbors house. Such a shame, but it had to come down.
A couple of doors down was this. When I asked that neighbor if he'd heard it happen, he said, "I saw it." It came right at him, missing the house and only glancing against his truck. He was mournfully pulling brush away from the trunk, and someone mentioned later that day that he seemed so sad.
These last few photos I took with my phone, so the quality is a bit murky. That's the river, at the end of the lane in the shot above. It's a tidal rive; we've even seen dolphins swimming in it in the summer. We live about three blocks away, and it's breaking not just about the bulkhead, but pouring into the street, over half a block up. As you can see, there are power lines down in the water, and again a tree in someone's yard.
This one, was perhaps the most impressive. It had the street shut down for several days. The root-ball alone had to be twenty feet high. It took out another tree and stretched across three yards, but missed houses and cars. Amazing. My friend Debbie hates the term "Nor'easter." As many times as we heard it, it's hard to blame her. I didn't miss the cable, really, although normally I'm glued to that sort of thing. I love Super Doppler Radar! We've heard the storm made the news everywhere, as far away as Australia. On my walk today even there was still debris everywhere, still some downed wires, and the gutters are still wet.
The forecast for tomorrow? Rain.
Well, it was nothing if not exciting. It reminded me of those days of my childhood when we were waiting for snowfalls. Watching the weather and the skies. We do that here too, only it never turns out to be as bad as they predict. Until now. This was pretty bad.
The lights started flickering (knocking out the cable), and it started raining on my drive into work on Wednesday. In some ways it was exciting. Huge flood gates along the river were closed, and already the air felt heavy with anticipation. It rains all the time around here, but my drive in was hard, and half way through the morning a limb fell on campus, knocking power out to three of our buildings. Callum had to halt in the middle of a spelling test. And that was before it got windy. But the skies felt squirrelly enough for me to tell his teacher that if things stayed the way they were, we wouldn't be heading to school the next day.
Driving home was even harder. My car is solid, but little, and it took all of my concentration to get us down the freeway and through town. Water was high everywhere we went. I had plans with some neighbors for dinner out at the beach that night, and while we weren't willing to give up our plans, we didn't want to make that drive. While we warmed ourselves with company and dinner (okay, and some wine too), the wind and the rain picked up. When we were getting out of the car, and the door slammed back on me, I pretty much called it then. No matter what happened for school, Callum and I were staying home Thursday.
The phone call saying school was closed came around 5:30 a.m. (thanks, guys!). Our local university closed, even the medical school where Neel works, which is simply unheard of. By the time we got up, the street already looked like this. We live in a tidal area, and this happens often. Neighborhoods flood, our neighborhood floods, even during your average, run-of-the-mill thunderstorms, and this combination of rain and wind, had everyone watching the tides. In this picture, our street was already full of water and high tide was ten hours away.
Neel and Callum had to pull the trash in. Trash pick-up was canceled.
Before long, water at the intersection down from our house was hip deep. See that blue car down there? Invariably some bozo will try to drive through and end up getting stuck. Watching this can afford us hours of entertainment.
And this is a few hours later, closer to high tide, but not there yet. I've never seen the water on the streets get this high.
And never this far north of our house has the street flooded. Neel used that tree, in the picture where he and Callum are dragging in the trash, as his barometer. That tree, on a little island, and next to it a little tuft of grass, to measure the rising water. If we kept that little island around the tree, we were doing okay.
And then high tide.
With things floating in cars.
For a bit, it seemed as if things were easing up, and in that brief lull between squalls, some folks got adventurous. But by late evening the winds kicked up even more fiercely. School was called off for the next day, for Neel again too. The lights flickered, and I hurried the soup. They flickered again, and we gathered all the candles. For awhile it looked like we'd be spared, but halfway through Harry Potter #2, out they went. That, for me was the scariest part. The wind howling and the lights of transformers flashing in the distance. We went to bed in the dark, with the wind howling around our heads.
Part two, the damage, will have to wait until tomorrow, I'm afraid. I have lots to show you.
The wind picked up overnight last night and so did the rain. It whipped around our heads, riling up the trees, now nearly denuded of their leaves, all night long. We're having sustained winds of 30-40 .m.p.h. with gusts over 55. By the time this is done, sometime tomorrow, we'll have over 8 inches of rain. All the schools are closed, even the medical school where Neel works. We couldn't have made it off our block anyway, much less through downtown. Many streets are underwater. High tide is still hours away.
I had a chat with my friend Debbie yesterday about the differences in our essential natures. She prefers clear skies and being out and about, while for me, well, I wish these unchained windy elements that send me homeward would last for days. I can picture her, restless at home, and I bet she's picturing me, happily settled in.
If I've told you this story before, feel free to stop reading.
When we were getting ready to move here, nearly seven years ago now, Neel's future employers flew us out for a visit to see how we liked the place. It was the first weekend of April in 2003. We'd been living in California for almost seven years by that point, and I was looking forward to seeing spring on the East Coast again. No such luck. A Nor'easter blew through that whole weekend, dropping the temps into the forties and whipping the wind and rain into a frenzy. Coming from San Diego, I didn't pack socks. The rental car they gave us was HUGE, and I remember struggling to maneuver it through the parking lot of the local mall to buy a three pack of socks at Eddie Bauer. Every second, I was wondering how in the world I was going to start managing to bundle my cranky almost-four year old into winter coats and boots. Every thing was cold and damp and hard. It's no wonder I sat in the window of our hotel room and cried literally all night long for what I was leaving behind.
We're getting lashed this week, and I love it. Forty-five to fifty mile an hour winds off the coast and four to eight inches of rain over the next three days. Despite the miserable drive into work, I've come to find this weather exhilarating. The trees are whipping outside my window, and already at home this morning our power flickered off and on. They are calling for extremely high tides and floods, and I find myself hoping that we just can't make the treck into school tomorrow. Exhilarating, yes. Best observed from home. It's Winds-day, Rabbit.
On gorgeous fall Sundays, we all spend a lot of time outside.
Every time one of us steps outside, they feel the need to put on a show.
Let's face it, they do it all the time, anyway.
Thea looks like she's laughing her dang fool head off.
Violet's a lover, not a fighter.
Break's over. We joke that Violet is the hardest working dog in show business. She takes her duties very seriously and clearly feels more comfortable controlling the perimeter than cavorting with those other two bozos.
Thea's ready to rest, however.
Violet, listen to your mother.
But Lucy's a restless soul.
D.O.D. Dogs on Duty. The trick is to make it look like you're resting.
Lucy and Thea cave pretty sharpish. Violet has everything under control.
It was the garden that really got us though.
Roughly three acres, directly across the street from a world-famous botanical garden. I guess that means you'd feel as if you'd have some "keeping up of standards" to do. It really showed off for us too. Look at that splash of red at the top of the photo. Breathtaking color. We're not that far into fall down here.
And a creek! What memories of this creek Neel and his brother have from growing up. It's the thin line midway through that first photo and crosses the property.
This pergola had Neel in fits of both inspiration and envy.
It was where house met garden that we were inspired the most. These were the images that had us standing in our own backyard in an early November drip, drip chewing on our lips and wondering, "what next" with our blank slate of a back yard. Deconstruction, then construction was about as far as we got.
Too bad we can't put in a creek. I'm starting to think every kid needs a creek.
When I was a little girl, my mom had glossy issues of House & Garden magazine floating around our home. Stacked on the coffee table or in baskets in the bathroom. It was a beautiful magazine (does it still exist?), but much like Vogue, which also floated around our house and was full of gorgeous pages of things I'd never wear, the homes in H&G never felt like ones I'd ever live in. I guess I'm more a Better Homes & Gardens kind of gal.
The house we visited last weekend was definitely a House & Garden kind of house. Neel's aunt and uncle have lived there for thirty-five years. His uncle saw the outside and liked the location (it was equidistant from three hospitals where he worked as an ENT doctor), and he bought the house! They hadn't even seen the inside. As his aunt says, it's basically a brick ranch and she tried to work with that. What she did was make it something special.
She has the kind of timeless good taste that never goes out of style.
This was my favorite room almost twenty years ago, and it still is today. These two love to travel and that love is reflected in their surroundings. The whole effect is one of elegance, luxury and comfort.
This is the room where we watched the deer. I'd have trouble concentrating with that amazing view. For those of you keeping score at home, note the expanse of white windows.
You'd think a ten year old boy would find it tricky to navigate a home with so many lovely things in it, but Callum managed just fine. Especially when he made it outside, but more on that during the garden portion of our tour.
Although perhaps he did a little editorializing. To his mind, no decor is complete without the addition of a fighter jet.
The amount of loot he hauled home was pretty scary too!
We made a quick trip to Pennsylvania last weekend. Neel's aunt and uncle live there, as well as some friends of ours. It was the perfect time to go. Autumn in all its glory. Neel's aunt and uncle have the most amazing home, straight out of the pages of House & Garden, and worthy of its own blog post - which I'll make you wait for.
I got up before anyone on Saturday morning and raised the blind on a window in the living room.
This is what was looking at me. My first thought was that these guys don't seem to be the type to have deer statues in their yard. And they aren't. Turns out we weren't the only visitors that weekend.
They came every morning around 7:30, and we sat so still, holding our breath as we watched. Mostly doe, sometimes two, sometimes three, they were always alert as they munched on acorns and leaves.
On the last morning, a buck came along with the doe, and it seemed clear that they were a family.
My family was mesmerized.
It occurred to me as I was putting things on the shelves, that this is a bit of a dream come true for me. Open shelves in the kitchen. A coming true of a pretty old dream. I had such fun deciding what pieces were going to go in this space. My very favorite kind of editing. They look pretty nice, don't they?
You know those boxes that they sell at craft stores? The kind that holds video tapes or photos? Although who has video tapes anymore? Anyway, I have one of those boxes filled with clippings of rooms and houses from decorating magazines. Inspiration. The one time I let someone peek, she pointed out that a huge chunk of my pictures were of banks of white-framed windows. Windows after windows after windows. It's fascinating to me what threads other people find that may have escaped my notice.
I guess another thread for me are these open shelves in the kitchen. Many, many years ago, my in-laws had a cottage in western Virginia that I loved. Simple home, a combined kitchen-dining-living room with a view for days. And the kitchen had open shelves. Now, looking at my own kitchen, I remember that kitchen, seen over fifteen years ago, and I remember my box of inspirations. I pulled out page after page of of kitchens like these Wide open spaces, spare of cabinets with dishes and glassware within easy reach. These two are my favorites. Lord only knows how long ago I pulled these pictures from an old Better Homes and Gardens magazine.
When we planned this kitchen and these shelves, I only knew that I was simply doing something that I wanted. What it took awhile to realize was that it's about time.
The sun is finally shining after a weekend of chill and misty weather. Oh the complaints at the cold! I didn't mind it, really. I must be ready to hunker down for the winter because the gray and damp days suited my mood.
We've been having football food for dinners on Sunday nights and eating in front of the late game. Wings, ribs, quesadillas. This weekend was a perfect weekend for chili. (Hat tip to my dad for the idea.). Add shredded cheddar cheese, sour cream and fritos (and beer), and we're good to go. Hunker down.
Q: Do hydrangea bush bloom twice in summer?
A: Maybe
B. Yes
It feels, right now, as if there is anguish all around me. All last week, my mind was peppered with petty grievances and irritations. Death by one thousand paper cuts. A daily deluge of nodding inconsequential details. It's easy to get wrapped up.
And then there's perspective. In the past several days, we've been hit by so much more. Death, illness, concern and fear. Nothing touching my own little gray house, worry not, but certainly skimming too, too close. I have a lot I want to write about here: Hungary still simmers, photos a-waiting, the kitchen, now nearly fully-functional and the spate of one-pot meals I've been working my way through, courtesy Martha and Everyday Food. But even I know when to take a breath. I want to write, and I am (although the stuff coming out of me right now is not necessarily for human consumption.). But this is our first fall day, with low(ish) temperatures and low skies and a butternut squash and roasted corn chowder on the stove, and what I think I really need to do right now is take that breath, wring my hands and fret a bit.
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things. Mary Oliver
We had dinner with some friends over the weekend with the thought that we'd bring the kids back to our house to have s'mores over the fire pit for dessert. It ended up too hot for the fire pit, but we came back here anyway (sangria!). So these guys were appropriately appreciative of the progress we've made on the kitchen and the new counters (aw shucks), and we answered question after question about how they were poured and installed. It reminded me that I hadn't posted any of that story here on the blog, so here, all your questions answered.
Don, the guy who did the counters for us, called a couple of weeks ago to ask if we wanted to see the third section poured. Um, hello? Of course we do.
This is the mold of the last section of counter. It's a corner section, so shaped like an "L." Don pours the counter upside down, and after it sets, he'll flip it over. If you look closely, there's a black line around the perimeter of the inside of the mold. That's the depth line. We wanted 1.5 inch thick counters, so that line is 1.5 inches above the base.
When we got to his studio, he had five big buckets lined up, ready to
pour the concrete. The buckets were filled with water, and after we
got there, he added a cup of stain to each bucket.
When it's time to add the concrete, the clock starts ticking. Don says he has about thirty minutes after he pours the powder into the water before the mix starts setting up.
Time to start mixing.
I always go to food analogies, but this was very much like making a cake.
And then right straight to the pouring.
Bucket,
after bucket,
after bucket.
Don scraped those buckets dry. He said he'd never had it come this close.
After that, the gloves come off. Don walked around patting the back of this baby for quite awhile. I may try that with my next cake batter.
After the patting, a wire grid is added to strengthen the form. It'll sink a bit, but not all the way to the bottom, which is really the top.
Almost before you know it, it starts to dry. The dull spots are drying first, and because drying concrete is an exothermic reaction, things start heating up from here.
By the time we left it was hot to the touch, and Don said that by the time he'd break the molds off that night he could fry an egg on it. How cool is that? We left soon after that, but from what he explained, Don broke the counter out of the mold that night, and flipped it as early as the next day. From there on out it's about drying and sealing and getting the color right.
Here it is, just about to be installed last week. That little ramp, maybe you remember it from the mold? That's where my dish drain goes so the water slides off into the sink. Dear concrete counters: I'm sold on you.
We moved back into the kitchen this weekend. We were able to do this because Neel painted at 2:30 in the morning. Go Neel! Painting! Who knew?
I spent all day Saturday putting things away, and it was great. Once the hallway is done I'll have more drawer space, so I decided to move my spices out of the pantry and into drawers in the island. This was some fun organizing. I think I'm going to like it.
Oh, my shelves.
This was some fun work too, figuring out what goes where. It took some heavy editing.
There are still holes in the wall and the back splash yet to go up, but I can feel it. We're almost there.
Oh, also, I Googled "twice blooming hydrangea" and the closest I got was this:
Q: Do hydrangea bush bloom twice in summer?
A: Maybe