Baking

The truth is I just love to bake! Oh, I can do a lovely soup and a few lofty tricks on a stovetop, but my preference is to put something in the oven once I’ve mixed it up, and then open the oven door at the prescribed time and have it turn into something all together different. The transformation of it is irresistible. “”I’ve done my part; now, you, Fire, do yours!” It’s a miracle! Imagine!

I am always finding excuses to make something. This month I must find uses for the many delicious apples literally falling off my backyard tree, like apple crisp made with oats. And the freshly picked peaches from Jo Gowan’s orchards such as a yummy peach and blackberry cobbler. (And last year it was the bizillion pumpkins that took over the back yard completely.)

pumpkins

I have not tackled the quince bushes yet. They will fall to the wayside, once again, I fear. Next year. But third week is Dad’s birthday and I have promised him a pound cake with a sweet citrus drizzle and this morning I am making peanut butter cookies to place in a colorful fall basket and mail down to North Hollywood to my beautiful, darling daughter. A girl needs cookies, right?

Long ago, ages ago, decades ago, in fact, I was a baker. (I would scarce use the word professional, though I was paid, in fact. And I have fantasized about sitting in a little unobtrusive booth at the Farmer’s Market, utterly anonymously, selling slices of banana bread and cookies to the attendees. I’m sure the children would love it. And I once had an inspiration when I lived in Mill Valley to add to the coffers of my single motherhood by “starting a business” called Dial-a-Pie, whereby folks in Mill Valley could call me up at a moment’s notice and I would pop a delicious pie in the oven and deliver it to them an hour or so later. You can see the impracticality of that. But it was a good name, you must admit.)

Anyway, way long ago, in Amsterdam, I was one of the bakers at a vegetarian restaurant called The Garden, ironically, and I was there on occasion early early in the freezing mornings, making banana pies with whipped cream, vege pies, and Power Cake, a recipe from The Farm in Tennessee. If my daughter was not in school that day she would accompany me and would amuse herself, sometimes, with dough, and once even made her own cookies which we sold as Antonia’s Cookies that day. She was thrilled and this had a lasting impression upon her, I know.

Moms, and Dads, I do hope you allow your children to bake! It is ever so easy and fun. It is devastating to my heart and soul when I see ads on tv of “mothers” hacking away at some dreadful roll of suspect dough just come out of a plastic tube, full of who knows what (nothing good, I assure you), surrounded by unwitting “happy” children.

Teach them to measure! What better way should they learn the importance of quantity than if the end result be a yummy frosted cupcake made by their own hand? Give them the joy of making a mess, of being creative, of licking out the bowl. (Oh, please tell me you are not letting them lick from those cardboard containers of instant frosting from the market!) And what better place to learn the value of making a mistake if the recipe said one cup of flour and the result was too dry from adding more?

It is a sad truth that our children, as well as ourselves, are far too disconnected from the source of our sustenance.

But enough of that.

If the remedy might be found even in small part in clearing the kitchen table and digging out a few pots and pans, a bowl or two and a measuring cup and some spoons, how hard is that? Here is my Grandmother’s old recipe for snicker-doodles to get you started.

Snickerdoodles
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
Cream in a larger bowl:
2 sticks of real butter (must be softened to room temperature)
1 1/2 cups of sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons of real vanilla extract
Sift together in second, smaller bowl:
2 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
Blend dry ingredients to butter/sugar mixture.
(Now the fun bit!)
Scoop spoonfuls of dough and roll between the palms of your hands into 1″ balls. Then roll each ball around on a plate in which you have combined 2 tablespoons of sugar and 2 teaspoons of cinnamon. Place balls 2″ apart on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake 8-10 minutes. [Tip: place cookie dough in frig while you are awaiting ones in oven! Thanks, Mary!] Remove from oven. Remove cookies straightaway from cookie sheet with spatula and place on a cooling rack.

Enjoy!

Posted on September 13th, 2007 by Kathryn
Filed under: People at Play | 3 Comments »

Scrub Jays

It was my daughter who first spotted the nest last spring lodged in the center of a tall pink camellia bush blooming just outside the kitchen window. A pair of lovely blue and grey Western scrub-jays were caring for a clutch of eggs and, once alerted, I was delighted to have a ringside seat to their endeavor. I happily climbed a small ladder day after day, several times a day, I assure you, to view each and every activity and relished every little change. I was enchanted!

Eventually the sitting and tending reaped the inevitable little heads poking upward for food brought dutifully by both parents. The dark green leaves of the camellia bush served as good protection from any potential predators, but eventually the day came when the five (!!) babies began to explore their environment, moving tenuously out of the nest on to adjoining branches. Overnight my euphoric witnessing of a delightful miracle turned edgy. What if they fell? Gradually and reluctantly the realization that I had very little control over their fate and well being sunk in upon me. Bummer.

One morning I took my window position over the sink and saw unexpectedly that nearly all the babies were recklessly bouncing from one branch to the next. Adrenaline swept through me,crescendoing as one adventurous baby (I was sure it was a boy) landed upon an innocent sibling (I was sure it was a girl) and they both went tumbling to the ground. I rushed outside, horrified. This was a tall bush. The nest was quite aways up. I knew it was futile to put them back. They had entered life as fledglings.

I don’t know why I thought a fledgling knew how to fly. Over the next couple of days I learned they don’t. They are most often helplessly on the ground, parents watching overhead trying to fend off predators, while they learn to fly to safety. Who knew?

Mama never forgets her birds,
Though in another tree–
She looks down just as often
And just as tenderly
As when her little mortal nest
With cunning care she wove–
If either of her “sparrows fall,”
She “notices,” above.

Emily Dickinson

By now my projections were fully engaged. I was an auntie at best, and I ran wildly at any cat that dared to cross my property line. Trying desperately to protect them I put up a mobile puppy fence at one end of that side of the house, hoping that might offer some protection. And then I proceeded to knock on every door of every house nearby asking whomever answered if they might be mindful that baby birds were literally afoot, and if they happened to have cats, would they please try to keep tabs over them the next three or four days just to give the babies a fighting chance?

I honestly don’t know if this had any effect whatsoever, other than to fully ensure that most of my neighbors’ eyebrows were permanently raised in my direction. I know the cats came and went with abandon. No one seemed to really care about the birds. It appeared it was a stretch to even consider in their worlds.

Eventually the babies disappeared. I had to fully surrender to the fact I would have no way of knowing who survived, who did not. I am left with some reassuring clues. One is that scrub jays routinely land on my fence, just a few feet from the nest, begging for peanuts, which they know I leave on the sidewalk, at the foot of the camellia tree. And I often see them bathing in the birdbath out front, particularly if the sprinkler is filling the bath. (They don’t bathe; they shower.)

More convincing is that this spring a scrub jay suddenly appeared in the old nest, still nestled untouched high in the budding camellia tree and he brought with him his mate, clearly showing her the possible nesting place, which she promptly rejected, to my disappointment. Instead they settled on a large compact tree in the back yard, way up high. I might not have even known had I not gone out one morning and found a large baby scrub jay looking bewilderedly up at me from the ground at the base of the tree. I never saw it again. But the parents took all the fledglings who were able to a fig tree and a large quince bush in the far back of the property and there they taught them all to fly. And that was that. I think they are here to stay.

Posted on September 6th, 2007 by Kathryn
Filed under: Animals | 5 Comments »

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