210112 is mumma come home?
jan. 12
Fish swim up the window. The primordial valley.
"sixteen miles from seven lakes, way up among the pines"
"a cabin and a backwoods trail"
The Hideaway, somehow, again.
"When I die let my ashes float down the green river, let my soul roll on up to the Rochester dam. I'll be halfway to heaven with paradise waiting, five miles away from wherever I am." *
Have I come home? ... to a home I have never known? - where the British soldiers lichen grows, that I used to see at the Hideaway, on the Bruce, where I can bathe in a mountain stream, where the sky is.
The doors and bones of the house are ones I must have chosen. The fish lights in the window, found at a church sale somewhere, where else did they ever belong, though they hung about my Toronto house waiting. I look down on the primordial valley of a superimposed river 375 million years flowing and the very doorstep is ocean-sediment stone of which these hills are made.
*****
It snowed again, is snowing, warm and still. Yesterday I napped, and made baked beans. This is the third batch of beans: I am still tweaking the recipe. It is not enough to find and execute a recipe of which there are many on the internet. I wanted to find one that the Québécois would have made two hundred years ago, with only beans, molasses, onions and fatback. Many recipes call for ketchup, one or two even soy sauce and fish sauce. Fish, maybe, but soy sauce? I found one with beans, onions, pork, but maple syrup, a Quebec staple, instead of molasses. I wanted to try the molasses first, so I had to find an alternative to the syrup, and came across a molasses and brown sugar mixture to replace it. Since then I have been practicing.
This big spoon never found a home in our kitchen in Etobicoke, but here it is just right for the big pot of beans.
My father used to ask my mother, "Why don't you write down the recipe and the time and temperature it takes for the dish?" But it's not that simple, at least not for my mother and me. My mother was a "pinch and scoop" cook and had left most written recipes behind. The freshness and availability of ingredients, the ambient humidity and temperature, even the stirring and lifting the lid can affect the product. I don't have the oven yet (it needs further cleaning to rid it of a weird smell), so I am doing the beans on the burner in a heavy aluminum pot that would be a pressure cooker if it had the little whistle top. It works very well. The beans have been delicious, full of rich flavour, but still not perfect. I do not advocate this cooking style; others might find it frustrating but I appreciate Tamar's life-long penchant for "re-inventing the wheel", for starting off on the unmarked trail instead of following others' footprints.
A long time ago our family was on a four day rotation diet, which separates foods by plant family and animal products and each group is consumed one day only out of four. We were introduced to it by a doctor of western medicine who was an allergy specialist and homeopathic practitioner, while trying to remedy Elf's allergies. The theory is that eating each food group one day in four allows reactions to show up more readily with particular foods. Your body is given time to rest from each food type. It was educational in many ways. It revealed food reactivity in several members of the family and we were often able to trace the culprit. We all learned to enjoy new and different foods. And, interestingly, I learned the art of creative cooking. I made cherry quinoa pudding, maple coconut pancakes, cooked with every sort of flour from whole wheat to almond, made curries with coconut milk back when there was still but one Thai restaurant in Toronto. As a result I am not afraid to "wing it" in the kitchen, and although many recipes get tossed, and children and grandchildren have sometimes asked to be excused from eating it, everything has been at least nutritious and almost never wasted (the recipe tossed, not the food!). It has only been in the last few years that I have begun to seek out recipes on the internet: it almost takes the fun out of improvising, except that I like to spin ingredients and methods from my own experience.
*****
Education is wasted on the young - at least it was on my young self! Growing older, I wished for more medical knowledge as I raised three kids and cared for aging parents. I have wished for a better grounding in the culinary arts, although I learned cooking and nutrition at my mother's side, and more as part of parenting. Recently in discussing beauty with K, (following on my 201211 post) I wished for a master's in the philosophy of beauty - it seems that question follows question in the pursuit of its meaning and significance. I long to know everything about the geology of these ancient mountains. I want to know about all the plants and creatures, how they live and co-exist. Of the stars I want only to learn their names; I am content to glean snippets of their science through general knowledge media.
I am still young: "I am a child in these hills". I am content. There is always learning, always wisdom towards which to strive, "and looking for water, and looking for life." **
A pond in the high meadow.
Thank you for visiting. Keep well.
Mumma Yaga
* Quotes: Gordon Lightfoot, Ferron, John Prine.
** A Child in These Hills, Jackson Browne
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