And now it is May

 

And now it is May.

I grew up in Connecticut, and May was the month when everything turned green.  Small leaves appeared on the trees.  When "the leaves on the oak are the size of squirrels' ears" shad would start to run in the rivers.  The first flowering trees were shadblum, also signifiers of shad, a fish that we ate one a year, more to celebrate spring and to have with young asparagus and buttered red potatoes than because we liked the taste.

We had many seasonal foods and traditions in our family, but right now I'm thinking of spring.  My mother didn't like to cook, but she liked to watch Julia Child (she died before the Food Network came to be, but oh how she would have loved all the chefs and cooking shows.)  Mim, our grandmother who lived with us, baked but didn't cook, the difference--as I see it--being that one strictly involved the oven and precise measurements, and the other requires slow burners, drifts of imagination, no certain regimen other than what is fresh, in season, and delicious.

You can probably tell I like to cook more than bake.

From the time I was fifteen I often cooked for my family.  My school had "mini-week" every January, and we could choose from a slew of interesting classes not usually offered.  My sophomore year I took French cooking.  Sister Denise taught it in the convent next door.  We made jambon persillade, coq au vin, blanquette de veau, and asperges au beure blanc.  I'd learn how to prepare the meal at school, then go home and cook it for my family, with a stop at Sussman's market along the way.

Spring was a time to celebrate.  There is so much beauty in every season, but the changes in spring literally feel like rebirth, the earth coming back to life.  Many people speak of unbidden joy, a feeling of hope that wasn't there before.  I feel a shadow.  Maybe it's because my father died in April, or perhaps it's just that I am an Irish existentialist at heart, and I know not to get attached to the beauty because it will not be here forever.  That's the problem, isn't it?  Things won't be here forever.

But for now we have wisteria, tulips, new leaves, migrating warblers traveling the eastern flyway in great numbers, landing in our yards and parks to rest on their way north to the boreal forest.  Just yesterday Anders Peltomaa reported seventeen warbler species in Central Park including a Yellow warblers, a Yellow-throated warbler, Black-and-white warblers, a Palm warbler, a Chestnut warbler and a Canada warbler.  (Large numbers, the migration definitely in full swing, a "fall-out"--literally, many migrants dropping from the sky--because of the storms we have been having.)

In the woods we have elusive wildflowers such as bloodroot, trillium, Jack-in-the-pulpits.  In the streams we have shad.  They are swimming up the Connecticut River in their annual and mysterious migration.  They are plentiful, but hard to find in fish markets because they are the devil to bone.  Those who can properly filet a shad are few and far between; it's a lost art.  The taste of shad is not for everyone: it reminds me of bluefish.  Enough said?  It's an oily fish and, on the plus side, rich in Omega 3 fatty acids.

Some people, including Nero Wolfe, love shad roe.

So if you can find shad and if you like it, or if you dare, I share with you here my menu--cooked once a year, in May, when shad are running, when oak leaves are no bigger than squirrel's ears.  Mim loved it, so I've named it for her.  Happy May!

Mim's Baked Shad

1 shad filet per person

1 cup whole wheat bread crumbs, freshly crumbed in a Cuisinart or your favorite food mill-type apparatus.

olive oil

fresh lemon juice and zest

salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 350.  Dry shad filets with paper towel and lay skin-side down in baking dish.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper and a dash of fresh lemon juice.  Mix bread crumbs with olive oil, enough to moisten--do use whole wheat bread because it's more full bodied and will work better with the strong flavor of shad.  Add a little more salt and pepper, and a half teaspoon or so of lemon zest to the bread crumbs, then divide the mixture among the shad filets, spreading it on top, not too thin, you don't have to be artful, this is mainly seasoning.

Bake for 30 minutes or till cooked through and bread crumbs golden brown.  (Check while baking, and if the bread crumbs are getting too dark, you can cover loosely with a piece of tin foil.)

Asparagus

The asperges au beurre blanc recipe from Sister Denise involved hard-boiled eggs, which I don't like.  But if you do, you can just peel and rice a hard-boiled egg and put it on top for garnish.

Bunch of asparagus

beurre blanc  (or olive oil)

Bring pot of water to boil.  Prepare asparagus by holding each stalk between two hands, bending till it breaks.  It will break in its natural spot, just throw away the tough inch-or-two from the bottom.  Add asparagus to boiling water.  (Salt the water if you like, I don't think the asparagus needs it.)  Cook until the asparagus is bright green, easily pierced with the tip of a knife--5-8 minutes.

Now, you can serve the asparagus straight out of the pot if you want.  Or you can drizzle it with a small amount of olive oil.  Or if you are fifteen and want to impress your family and by the way feed them very well, you can serve it with beurre blanc.  Don't forget to add the chopped hard boiled eggs IF and only if you like them.

Beurre blanc

1 shallot, chopped fine

4 ounces white wine

fresh juice of 1/2 lemon, strained

1 tablespoon heavy cream

12 ounces cold unsalted butter, 1/4 inch slices

salt and white pepper

Combine shallots, wine, and lemon juice in non-reactive saucepan and cook over high heat until simmered down to 2 tablespoons.   Add the cream and cook until the sauce  bubbles.  Add butter, 1 slice at a time, whisking over low heat.  Whisk continuously until all butter is added and sauce is emulsified.  Pour over asparagus.  This is where you garnish with hard boiled eggs if desired.

Red Potatoes á la Hubbard's Point

This is my favorite part, a vehicle for the rest of the meal.  It's a very casual and most delicious dish, and requires guests to participate, in that they'll have to peel their own garlic at the end, when served.

A pound or two of the tiniest, reddest new potatoes you can find

olive oil

sea salt and freshly ground pepper

cloves of garlic--don't bother peeling them

sprigs of fresh rosemary

Preheat oven to 400.  You want it hot.

Do not wash or peel potatoes.  If necessary clean them with a dry cloth or paper towel.  Cut in half or quarters, depending on how large.  You want them to be about the size of a walnut.  Spread olive oil on cookie sheet--don't stint.  You'll use a lot, but it won't be absorbed, so you won't be consuming that much--it's for flavor and browning.

Place cut potatoes on cookie sheet, rolling in olive oil until well-covered.  Add unpeeled cloves of garlic.  Season with sea salt and freshly ground pepper.  Add a couple of springs of rosemary--in one piece, not broken up.

Insert sheet into oven.  As soon as you hear the oil starting to sizzle, after 10 minutes or so, remove pan and with a spatula turn the potatoes so they don't stick to the pan and so they brown on all sides.  Do this a few times over about 30 minutes--cooking time depends on size of potatoes.  You want to cook them until they are crispy.

Serve with cloves of garlic straight from the pan, still in their jackets, and tell your guests to peel them themselves.  It will be fun for them, easier for you, and the garlic will taste delicious with the potatoes and shad, or even spread on slices of baguette.

Providence

LITTLE NIGHT comes out tomorrow, the very same day the Transit of Venus will occur for the last time in our lifetimes. Coincidence? I'm not sure... Some of you know how inspired I am by nature, especially celestial events. The full moon on the ocean enchants me. I've never missed a Perseid meteor shower--every August 11th night you'll find me on a beach blanket, watching for meteors to streak across the sky. Sometimes it's raining or too cloudy to see, but I still try. This year the planets have been lining up at dusk, sometimes with the crescent moon, to cast a spell and remind us not to remain overly earthbound.

The title, LITTLE NIGHT, has layers of meaning...I hope you'll discover them when you read the novel. They're all connected to love, and the mysterious ways we move in and out of the dark with each other. There are secrets in the sky and in our hearts...tomorrow the Transit of Venus might help translate a little of both.

When I was a young writer I lived for a short time in Providence Rhode Island--the city of my grandmother Mim's birth. I and my then-love lived at the corner of Benefit and Transit Streets and became best friends with two writers who lived in an old Victorian house at the other end of Transit. They occupied the second floor, and there was a crooked staircase lined with books, and he wrote under one eave on the landing, and she wrote under another eave in the kitchen, and she covered her typewriter with his boxer shorts--long before computers--and we were all in love and great friends and talked about books and fly-fishing and our lives and worst fears and fascinations and acted out sketches of our families and first dates and everything else while eating cozy dinners and drinking much scotch.

There was something about that house. The fact it was on Transit Street explained some of the magic. The street was named after the Transit of Venus, a phenomenon observed in Providence in 1769 by Joseph Brown and his brother Moses using a telescope from the top of a tall wooden platform. The event was commemorated by the naming of two Providence Streets--Transit and Planet.

I wrote one of those writers today to ask about the street, and he replied: It was named after the Transit of Venus. And it happens once every 100 years. I don't know much more about it. Did you know it was scheduled for your book date?

Actually I hadn't put that together. But it seems auspicious, considering that LITTLE NIGHT is dedicated to him. We've stayed friends all these years, still bound by our loves of books, family, fishing, sharks, celestial events, dogs, cats, and a thousand million other things. We wrote THE LETTERS together. It's a paradoxically singular experience, writing a novel with another person, and I can't imagine doing that with anyone but Joe.

LITTLE NIGHT, long friendship, the Transit of Venus; it's all Providence.

Look up

There is so much to love and find beautiful right now, while memories tug into the past, thoughts of Christmases gone by.  I find this time of year bittersweet. I think of my mother, father, and Mim, old friends, a sister who's said goodbye.  I remember the house we grew up in, on Lincoln Street in New Britain, Connecticut.

We'd decorate the tree, wrap a lauren garland  around the banister, place another over the mantle,  and drape one over the front door.  Mim would decorate the wreath, hang it on the door.  We'd bake Christmas cookies.  One year we made clay angels, and our favorite was the one that looked like Uncle Fester from the Addams Family.

Even then, at a young age, there was longing for more connection, especially with my father.  If you've read my novel Firefly Beach, you know the story of my pregnant mother, three-year old sister, and my five year old self being held hostage one night, by the man with a gun.  It happened at Christmas, and had to do with my complicated father, so that experience is in my holiday memory bank as well.

Isn't it strange the way we sometimes miss sad or painful things?  Maybe it's the desire to go back and make them turn out right.  My father would be magically happier, the man with the gun wouldn't have come, the cold and dark would stay outside while in our little cape cod house our family would be cozy, drawn together, safe and sound.  That's the visions-of-sugarplums version.

In reality there were many visions-of-sugarplum moments.  My mother would read to us from The Cricket on the Hearth and A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens; The Story of Holly and Ivy by Rumer Godden; A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas.

One summer we found an enormous starfish, and began to use it as the star atop our tree.  When my father was home he'd place the star; I'd always have a lump in my throat when he did that.  On Christmas Eve my mother would tell us to listen for the angels singing, it was the one time in the year that we could hear them, and we always would, just before drifting off to sleep.

Later, after my father died, we moved to the beach year-round.  We kept the old traditions but found new ones.  We heated with a coal stove, so there was an old-fashioned ritual to stoking the fire.  We'd tie red ribbons around all the candlestick holders, and light the night by candlelight.

On Christmas morning, nearly every year, we'd look out at Long Island Sound and see sea smoke: a low mysterious cloud just over the water's surface, like smoke above a cauldron, a phenomenon caused when arctic air moves over warmer salt water.

Sometimes we'd see ships passing down the sound, some with lighted Christmas trees tied to their masts--magical to look far out and see that, tiny bright spots sailing along the horizon--and we'd wonder where they were going, how the crew felt to be away from their families.

At night we'd go outside.  Maybe it would be snowing, or the stars would be blazing, and one year a comet streaked through the sky--celestial wonder.  The moment brought us close to heaven, and I'd think of my father, I think we all did, and sent him love while also wondering why he couldn't have been happier here on earth, and Mim would stand in the kitchen door calling us back inside, weren't we freezing, it was making her cold just to look at us.  We'd laugh and go in.

So many gone, but strong love still here.  My little sister and I have each other.  Her husband and daughter, and our niece and her husband, and two friends so dear they're nothing less than family to us.  We've been creating our own traditions over the last years. We've invited to the table our ghosts and lost loves, so they can be at the celebration too.  We carry them with us.

Maybe the lesson, if there has to be a lesson, is that nothing is ever all one way.  The holidays seem to promise universal goodness, happiness, togetherness.  That isn't always the way, and because of our heightened hopes, the disappointment can be all the greater.

There's beauty in every life, every single day.  Sometimes it takes effort and focus to find it.  To find that starfish, taking that beach walk we had to look down.  Even when your heart is aching for who's not here, you look around and find who is.  There's someone who loves you.  There's a cat who wants to sit on your lap.  There are bright stars in the cold, dark sky.  Position the starfish at the top of the tree.   All will be well.

Look up.

[Image at top of page: The Meteor of 1860 by Frederic Church.]

We Gather Together (even if we can't)

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. This year I'm missing my sister Maureen--she and Olivier went to France, to say bon voyage to his brother and sister-in-law, leaving Bordeaux to open an inn in Indonesia.  Missing my nieces, too--Mia will be with her friend, and Molly will be with her husband Alex and his family.  We'll all be together in spirit, as well as with Rosemary...sometimes that's the best even a close family can do.

Thinking of Maureen and Olivier in France, I remember having Thanksgivings in Paris.  The day would start by reading Art Buchwald's yearly-repeated column in the International Herald Tribune.  Then I'd make dinner, including a not-so-easy-to-find dinde, for all my American friends there.  There'd always be at least twenty...

I'm very lucky, though; a young friend, Nyasha, is coming down from Massachusetts to spend the holiday with me.  I love having visitors from out of town, and I'll enjoy showing her all my favorite NYC places, and having a special dinner.

Growing up always had dinner with my father's sisters and family--Aunt Mary, Uncle Bill, and Billy Keenan, Aunt Jan and Uncle Bud Lee--either at our house in New Britain or the Keenans' in Elmwood.  When it was at ours, we had lots to do to prepare.  Wednesday was a half-day at school, and my sisters and I would run home to help our mother and grandmother.

We'd go down to the basement to get the good china and crystal glasses, and we'd wash everything till it sparkled.  Mim would bake pies, and we'd help: apple, pumpkin, and mince.  One of us would make cranberry-orange relish--a recipe via Ocean Spray from the Whitneys, the family across the street for whom I babysat--and another of us would bake cranberry and date-nut breads.

The three of us would help polish the silver, and fill bowls with nuts in their shells.  My grandmother had a turkey platter, a green oval with a splendid turkey, its tail spread and preening, displayed on a hutch in the dining room.  We would take it down, the only time all year, feeling excited to know the next day it would be laden with turkey.

(Photo below from right: Tom Rice, Bill Keenan, Mary Keenan, me, Billy's elbow, Lucille Rice raising her glass, tiny corner of Maureen's hair.)

After dinner, my father would lead a walk on Shuttle Meadow golf course, across the street.  It was always wonderfully bracing and damp, and usually cold, and we'd tromp through the rough toward the brook and ponds, to see if any ice had formed yet.  Given my father and Uncle Bill's humor, there'd be lots of laughter.

Dinner at the Keenans's was great, not only because we were guests and had only to bring the pies, but because Billy had these toy horses that I loved and wanted to play with long after it made sense age-wise.  When we got older and could drive, "the kids"--my sisters, Bill, and I--would go to the movies.  Billy and I were recently reminiscing about seeing Silent Movie at the Elm Theater.  Dom Deluise's line, "I need a blueberry pie badly" made a particularly deep impression.

Billy was a football player; if he had a game we'd go see him play at Northwest Catholic.  Later, when he went to Amherst College, one of my teenage highlights was to head up there with his parents and my sisters, tailgate in the parking lot, and feel like hot stuff because we knew Billy.  (Photo of Rosemary, me, Bill Keenan.)

This year Thanksgiving falls on November 25.  That is a bright and shining occurrence.  It happened once many years ago.  Mrs. Whitney, my "other mother," (and currently bookseller extraordinaire at G. J. Ford ) gave birth to her second daughter, the exceptional and luminous Sam--aka the best midwife in the west in my novel Dream Country.  Sam lit up our lives from the minute she was born, and continues to do so while being the best midwife in the west, raising her daughter (my goddaughter) and twins, and telemark skiing in the mountains of Park City, Utah. (Photo of Sam and Sadie)

We all attended Vance School--from my mother to my sisters and me to the Whitney children (aside from Sam, the birthday-Thanksgiving girl, there are Tobin and the twins Sarah and Palmer.)

Every year all the classes filed into the auditorium, and we'd sing We Gather Together and Over the River and Through the Woods.  May you all be gathering together with your families and friends, all your loved ones.

Cranberry Orange relish:

1 bag cranberries; 1 seedless orange; 1 cup of sugar.  Make in two batches: chop up the orange and put half plus half the cranberries and half the sugar through a Cuisinart, food mill, or grinder.  Then do it again.  The relish will be delicious and you will be happy.

The photo above is of Maureen and me in the kitchen at Hubbard's Point.

Luanne's Tribute To Her Grandmother

In this video, Luanne Rice, tells us how her Grandmother, Mim, became a huge influence on her writing.

Wedding Chronicles, Part I

Oh love.  I woke up thinking of it.  Maybe I'd dreamed...  No, I know.  I'm thinking of love because my niece is getting married next week. She is radiant and beautiful, a scientist who left the lab with her betrothed to make a better frozen yogurt in Northampton.  Go Berry is delicious and causes cravings.  This is a brilliant young woman.  Not least of all, Molly is known for having debunked the 5-second rule.  I mention it here only because if an aunt with a blog can't promote her niece's frozen yogurt, who can?

Alex, her fiance, is also a scientist.  They met at Connecticut College.  They love the sea, the ocean, the littoral zone, marine life, diving, swimming, many other things, and especially each other.  Their kindness is touching beyond words.  They once drove miles out of their way when the snow was lovely, dark, and deep, to give me a hug just because I needed one.

Molly goes through life with such courage and grace.  I'm late to her life.  I didn't know her well as a little girl, but we've been making up for lost time.  My sister Maureen and I are watching her and Alex plan their wedding, proud to be her  aunts.

I'm writing this because Love is amazing.  It is fierce when it has to be.  It forgives.  It finds people who believe, really believe in it, and takes them into its fold.  This has happened with Molly and Alex. There's sorrow here, yes, there is.  There are people we love and miss--every day, but especially now.

The wild gift, beyond the casting off, has come in the form of a great coming-together.  Families getting to know each other.  The joy of having Alex in our lives.  Molly and her cousin Mia have gotten close.  Today as Mia heads off to grad school (I feel another niece blog coming,) Molly and Alex will be driving her to Vermont, helping her move in.  They're together today and will be again next week; Mia will be one of Molly's bridesmaids.

Twigg will be at the wedding, wouldn't miss it for anything.  The Loggias love Molly and will attend.  I know my mother and Mim, ghosts for many years now, will be there.  And so much family in spirit--I love you, we love you, you know that.  We'll celebrate at the edge of the sea together.  Be there!

Random wonderful thing

A great beach friend from childhood and, in some ways, even before--our parents had been friends when they were young, and our grandparents before that--posted on my facebook page today.  We were reminiscing about Helen Hubbard--a neighbor who lived on the Point, and for whom my fictional beach town "Hubbard's Point" is named. Betty reminded me of how we used to crouch under Helen's window to listen to her practice.  Helen was an opera singer and voice teacher, and when she sang it was beach music--as much a natural sound as seagulls and wind blowing through the pine needles.  Once or twice a summer she would give recitals and invite grownups from the Point.  That didn't stop us kids from sitting outside and enjoying the performance.

Betty and her sisters and brother and my sisters and I were across-the-road neighbors, and pretty much inseparable from Memorial Day through Labor Day.  We loved summer and each other.  The beach was OURS.  As I wrote back to her, we swam and laughed all day.  Mim, my grandmother, and her great-aunt Florence would hang out together too, tell old stories, go for swims in their skirted bathing suits and white bathing caps.

When Betty's family visited Ireland--often--they would come home with Irish linens, wall-hangings, and tea towels.  My cottage is still filled with the many gifts they brought us.

Her family had a party every Labor Day.  Such a bittersweet gathering!  The weather would still be summery, but fall and school and--especially-leaving the beach--were in the air.  We'd walk down the steep steps from their cottage to glacial rock ledge sloping into Long Island Sound.  Black-eyed Susans, bright pink sweet peas, and lavender flowered spearmint grew at the top of the rocks.  A picnic table would be set with plates of sandwiches, platters of sliced honeydew and musk-melon, and--the piece de resistance--Aunt Florence's soda bread and blueberry buckle.

We'd make that party last as long as possible, because as soon as it was over it was time to pack the station wagon and head up to New Britain for the school year.

As Betty says, our memories are a treasure in themselves.  She is so right.  Just connecting with her today makes me remember everything, and smile, and feel so happy.  I wish I had a picture of us all as children--if I did, no doubt our hair would be wet, someone would be adorned with seaweed, there'd be sunglasses, flip-flops, and a few Good Humors in the picture.  And we'd be doing our best and not succeeding to keep from laughing.