Bugs and Berries

Summer in Wisconsin is about brats, cheese curds, and beer, but it's also about eating fresh foods right from the fields.

We went strawberry picking on Sunday at a farm just west of Janesville. The picking was amazing: two people, a combined 20 feet of a row of berry plants, and 30 minutes = about 16 pounds of beautiful, delicious berries.

The other reason we went to Janesville was to see the cicadas. I've grown up hearing about the 17-year periodical cicadas in northern Illinois and didn't want to miss seeing some for myself. I've never really been a bug person, despite my young fascination with those movies of the insides of giant termite colonies, so I didn't really want to see the crazy "sweep them out of your path with a broom" masses of cicadas. But I didn't want to miss them entirely.

There weren't any cicadas in evidence at the farm where we picked the berries but just a few miles east at the Cook Arboretum we got out of the car and could hear the cicadas right away! I'd post video if I were savvy enough to figure out how to do that but photos will have to be enough for now. The sound was thrilling though. I'd heard that the sounds of these masses of cicadas were enough to drown out a conversation and that the Chicago Symphony's Ravinia schedule has been altered this year because the sound of the insects would actually interfere with the sounds of concerts.

Since we didn't have the masses of cicadas in Janesville that are present in some areas of Chicagoland (indeed it took us awhile to actually spot any bugs at all) the loud volume of the sound from the few cicadas in the arboretum was impressive. You could hear two layers in the sound: one dry, scratchy sound and then the constant pitched drone.

The cicadas themselves are pretty cute, especially their eyes. See what I mean? But the most amazing thing about these insects comes when you start to think of the scale of their lives, emerging from the ground to do their thing in seventeen-year cycles: 2007, 1990, 1973, 1956, 1939, 1922, 1905... The next time I'll get to see them will be in 2021. Wow.

Farmers' Market

As I prepare to move away from my dearly-beloved city of Madison I am trying to cram as much Madison as I can into my last few weeks here. Hence my lack of recent posting - too much to do (paint the deck, work in the garden, pack boxes, eat asparagus) and so little time!

It doesn't get much more Madison than a Saturday morning at Farmers' Market on the square (where does that possessive apostrophe go anyway? There are multiple farmers at the market, so I'm putting it there).

To top off last Saturday's Farmers' Market it was also "Cows on the Concourse." Does it get any better than this? I don't think so. Fresh cheese curds, a cool morning, content cows, the crowded counter-clockwise shuffle, and bags of produce to take home.

Here's a recipe for my favorite spring market soup from the May 4, 2002 Harmony Valley Farm CSA newsletter:

"Simple Green Soup"
2 T. butter or veg oil
1 small, diced onion
1 lb. peeled and diced sunchokes (also known as a "jerusalem artichoke" thru some awkward and historic pronunciation language gap between Italian and English. You could use other root veggies like potatoes but I strongly recommend getting sunchokes if you can since their flavor is superior)
4 cups water or broth
1 bunch nettles (or you can use sorrel or watercress, but I absolutely prefer the nettles - just wash them well to get rid of the sting)

Saute your onions in the butter until translucent. Add sunchokes and broth. Bring to boil and simmer 15 min or until sunchokes are soft enough to yield to pressure from a fork or knife. Add the nettles and the heat of the broth should wilt them. Puree until smooth with an immersion stick blender or use a food processor (but go in small batches, trust me).

Option: add some cream or half 'n' half at the end for a creamy soup. And/or add a tiny pinch of cayenne pepper for a little extra warmth.

Serve with fresh bread and fresh cheese curds on the side and you've got a lovely spring market meal. So good.

the more we change...

the more we stay the same.

I finally broke down and purchased the weighty tome that is Martha Stewart's Homekeeping Handbook: The Essential Guide to Caring for Everything in Your Home.

I don't know why I feel so compelled by these all-in-one domestic management manuals. Perhaps it's the bibliophile in me - all the answers to your most obscure and your basic mundane questions: "How to care for cloisonne" and "How to get the most out of your dishwasher," it's all there!!

Maybe it's because I actually kind of like keeping things tidy, cooking, sewing, and knitting. One the one hand I did receive the home economics award at my eighth-grade graduation, a fact both embarrassed and enraged me even at 13. Why didn't I get the geography award or the English award? I did well in those classes too! Even in high school I did fine in my classes but got an award in economics, a class I cared little for that taught skills I prefer not to actually implement in my current life because they make me think about how little money I actually make... Maybe they just drew names from a hat for those school award ceremonies, I'd like to think so.

And on the other hand, maybe it's just because these books are so darn useful. After all, I would like to get the most out of my dishwasher, wouldn't you?

I think at the root of my recent purchase is my desire for a book long out of print and now found only in libraries and archives: Catherine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe's The New Housekeeper's Manual, published in 1873. How I would love to own a copy of my very own. While I was preparing a class on American women in the nineteenth century I was able to browse a copy in the Cairns Special Collection at the University of Wisconsin. It had really great stuff in there, like how to make your own potting soil with old composted manure from your cows, how to set up a house for proper ventilation, how to make dried pea soup. You know, useful stuff.

Here's Catherine Beecher's recipe for Dried Pea Soup (paraphrased from my notes):

Soak a quart of dried peas in water overnight
Rinse them in the morning
Add the peas to four quarts of water
Add 1 t. sugar, two chopped carrots, two chopped small onions, one chopped stalk celery
Boil three hours
In another pot boil 1 pound salt pork for one hour
Remove the skin from the boiled salt pork and add the pork to the pea soup
Boil one more hour

I also copied the recipes for spongecake and potato soup. I'm a little nervous about the spongecake, given the fact that we're baking in two completely different kinds of ovens (open hearth vs. gas?), but I aim to try it one of these days. This also gets at my fascination with historical cookbooks and recipes. But that's a story for another day.

How do I reconcile this compulsion for housekeeping books with my own third-wave feminist-ness? Well, they published a domestic manual, but the Beecher sisters were no wallflowers. Since I can't have the Beecher sisters' book, I guess I'll just have to settle for Martha's. At least she talks about composting. Martha may not be an abolitionist but she's feisty. I can live with that.

Where my thoughts are today...

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence

http://www.bradycampaign.org/

The BBC World Service conducted this interview with Daniel Vice of the Brady Campaign:

BBC: (on passing "common sense" gun laws) …In fact, the laws are getting less strict not more strict.

Vice: Sadly at the federal level, we have had some success at the state level, for example, after the Columbine shootings Colorado passed a law requiring background checks at gun shows. But in Virginia you can go to a gun show and buy a semi-automatic military-style assault rifle – no background check, not even a record of sale (BBC commentator: "Oh my…), you don't have to tell them your name.

BBC: Why is that the case?

Vice: Partly I think it's the myth of the power of the gun lobby. The National Rifle Association has a lot of money, which they give freely to our elected officials and very few are willing to stand up and say no. But we've seen that when they do, and there are some who do, that they are supported by the American public. People support common sense gun laws and we're hopeful that our leaders will finally stand up and say enough is enough and protect our children.

BBC: When tougher laws were introduced in Colorado after the Columbine shootings, what was the public response there?

Vice: The public was supportive of that and we've seen that gun laws work. For example, in other countries that have passed tough gun laws there's no where near the level of gun violence that we have. And at the federal level we're working to change that, where we can't succeed there we'll go at the state level, and if we have to change our leadership that will come too.

*****

Idle hands are the devil's work, but busy hands are the dissertator's bane

Oh dear knitting, how I've missed you.

I thought I could be a studious worker on my dissertation during this semester of enforced solitude but then I started looking at knitting blogs and websites and now I'm hopelessly distracted. Here's my latest project: an Anthropologie capelet that just about everybody who's knitting and blogging has been making. It's super easy, which was good for lapsed knitters like me who forget how to do yarn-overs and other simple stitches (not that I got the yarn-over right at all in this shrug, don't look too closely!).

Here's the link (I have yet to figure out hypertext):
http://peonyknits.blogspot.com/2005/11/anthropologie-inspired-capelet-fo-and.html

I used three full 50g balls of Rowan Starlight (because everyone loves a little sparkle). I only bought two when I started but had to go back to Knit a Round for another when it was clear that two was going to make a very, very short little capelet. I should know better than to wander around a yarn shop unsupervised, but my favorite part of my little capelet is the LOVELY shell pin I found while browsing. It's from www.shawlpins.com.

Now I'm working on a lovely spring shawl from www.knitty.com, my new favorite site for cool and free knitting patterns. And, yes, I have since figured out the yarn-over. Now if only the weather would warm up again so I can wear short sleeves!

Not your average catnip mouse

Gehrig and Max were especially pleased with the contents of their package from their Kitty Grandparents in Minnesota.

Note: we should have included some common everyday object for a sense of scale (a ruler, a quarter, a Volkswagen Beetle). It's not a "Honey, I Shrunk the Cats" scenario, although that could be cute in itself, but rather this is the largest catnip mouse you've ever seen. I guarantee.

As ever, "Value Village," my favorite thrift store in the entire Twin Cities, is responsible for being the source of this fantastic find. That's the fabulous thing about thrift and consignment stores, you find the most amazing things you never thought you needed but just have to have because you know you'll never find something like this again.

Max and Gehrig send their thanks and best wishes for a tuna-filled Easter Monday.

The Motor City