6 ~ Welcome, Spring

Greetings on this first day of spring for we northerners, and first day of fall in the southern hemisphere.  For all of us, this equinox marks a point (one of two in the year) when day and night meet as equals.  Henceforth, days will be increasingly longer than nights in the hemisphere of polar bears, and the opposite trend in the penguin hemisphere. 

Although spring appeared on the calendar, it snowed this morning here in Iowa County, Wisconsin.  This made an even cozier morning to celebrate the equinox with the prime product of early spring, fresh maple syrup - this morning poured over blue corn pancakes.  The ‘cakes are courtesy of yet another cornmeal recipe I acquired from New Mexico - no surprise, since people in that part of the world (the contiguous area of New and Old Mexico) have been eating corn longer than anyone on Earth, for the last 10,000 years or more. I first tasted these wonderful pancakes at Santa Fe’s Plaza Cafe (established 1905), and afterwards tracked down their recipe, which you can find here. It’s normally made with the addition of pine nuts, but even without, as this morning, they are stellar.   

 This first day of our spring and austral fall also marks the 88th day since I last went grocery shopping (December 23, 2019).  Since that time, I did buy popcorn, a box of peanut butter Girl Scout cookies (civic duty still calls) and made a run to my near-neighbor, Cress Spring Bakery, for some marvelous bread (in part because my brother, Tom, was visiting me; at least, I used him as an excuse). 

What I find surprising is not how quickly I’m running out of good food, but how much, with a bit of shelf rummaging and creativity, I still have (even without any advance planning for this exercise - this was started on a whim).  In the past, I looked at what I didn’t have, then went searching the aisles of the food store.  Now I’m looking at what I have, and finding a lot.  It’s a reflection of life, if we slow down and open to it - the abundance it holds, here and now.  This is rich, empirical practice (and perhaps remembering) for me, and maybe something many of us will discover more deeply during this singular corona time. 

For this endeavor, I’ve found that having some laying hens helps a lot (grateful to those girls), some flour (corn or wheat) and a bit of dairy (which I continue to inherit or acquire in unexpected ways, just enough).  With eggs, flour and dairy (or a stand-in, such as coconut milk) and a few odds ’n sods from the vegetable or meat world, you can do a lot. So cloistered at the farmhouse this week, I dove in.

I collected maple sap and boiled down and bottled a few pints of syrup.  From the basement, I rescued - or is it euthanized - the last standers of the pie pumpkins from last fall.  I made a fresh pumpkin pie (sweetened with the maple syrup), and roasted the seeds.

I followed that with a leek quiche (my first quiche, and it came out pretty well – showing off the photo at top), and picked the last shell beans from the trellis in the garden - they’ve been hanging there, sound and unmolested, all winter.  In the freezer, I found a package of venison loin from 2017; at another time, I might have tossed it, or procrastinated tossing it for another few years.  But thawed, it looked and smelled flawless, and a pot of bean and venison stew now simmers on the stove as I write this.  That simmer also better soothes my spirit - it would be a transgression to kill a deer, take its holy life, and discard its nourishment due to neglect.

I’ll leave off now, and on this spring day head appropriately to the spring, to collect some watercress for a salad with the stew.  Thanks for being here with me - connection is important, anyway we can find it now.  Be well. -Bill

What I’m reading now and can recommend:

 Janis: Her Life and Music, by Holly George-Warren (2019)

I grew up with some of Janis Joplin’s music through a couple of my older brothers, and was always rather wowed by her voice and presence.  But until I picked up this recent biography I had little idea what a revolutionary, resilient, blazing comet of a person she was. I’m only about halfway through the book, she hasn’t yet made it big, but the word “genius” (and sadly, “tragic genius”) already comes to mind.