There comes a time

Politics are not the purview of this blog. There are so many voices, far more educated, erudite and articulate, better informed, better suited and in short, better qualified to discuss politics and political issues. But as a very clear-minded person said today, and will say again publicly this evening, There comes a time when doing the right thing is more important than convenience. Eat Here Eatery generally concerns itself with people and food, recipes and gardens, flowers and birds. But, you know, there comes a time.

There comes a time when we realize that some things we've done aren't right. They may have been fun; they may have been thoughtless; they may have been done in youthful exuberance and innocent ignorance. In the days of Mad Men, our pregnant mothers and grandmothers sat chattering together around bridge or cocktail or picnic tables, martini in one hand, cigarette in the other. Many of our parents and their generation had loud and brightly lit parties on beaches til all hours; some even harvested sea turtle eggs for the richest, most delicious cakes any of them remember tasting. My girlhood was punctuated with family outings during which we rode dune buggies or other four-wheel drive vehicles through the high dunes of the beaches in northeastern Florida, heedless of nesting birds or native plantlife, which were raising chicks or holding the dune lines together. We don't do any of those things anymore, because we KNOW BETTER NOW. We don't go whaling. We don't hunt to extinction species of birds because we value certain feathers for our hats. We don't shoot buffalo in their thousands, simply because we see them standing placidly alongside our railroads. (Well, maybe there are variations on this theme - rhino horn, anyone? - but we'll leave those for another day.) We don't do these things anymore, because we've matured as a species, ourselves, and because we've begun to see ourselves in the holistic context of our small blue planet, and we simply KNOW BETTER.

And so it is with driving on the beaches on land adjacent to the Fort Matanzas National Monument and the southern portion of the GTM Research Reserve. Tonight and tomorrow night, there will be public meetings in discussion of the National Monument's draft management plan. The most divisive issue under discussion is likely to be that of Driving on the Beach. There's a very vocal group who advocate for this, despite the dangers it poses to one of the most pristine, delicate ecosystems in our area, which will absolutely suffer negative impacts should the practice be continued. Both meetings begin at 6 pm and take place at Lohman Auditorium at the Whitney Labs in Marineland. Many false claims have been made in the past, and those same claims are likely to be made tonight and tomorrow night. Here are the facts:

There are already miles of beach with safe driving access and even ADA-compliant ramps in our county.

There are ADA-compliant ramps to access the beaches adjacent to the parking lots at the National Park.

There is no need to drive on all beaches to continue access for fishing, boating, walking the dog, playing with the kids, or simply sitting quietly in profound admiration for the rich marine and estuarine heritage with which we're blessed.

There comes a time when we put away childish things. And here we are again, outside the purview of this blog, quoting Biblical references. But this is exactly the heart of my view. I believe that we are learning to be good stewards of what we have. Someone said to me, of the riches of northeastern Florida, "We live in paradise", and it may very well be true. But I recall being young and reckless and thoughtless about what my children might see of this paradise; I didn't HAVE children; it didn't matter so much to me when I was twenty. When you put away childish things, you're not putting away fun. You're not putting the values of your family or your heritage. You're not putting away The Way We Used to Do Things. You're simply stepping into mature and responsible stewardship of your riches, whatever form they may take.

As a species, as a collective of sentient beings living on the Earth, we have - mostly - put away hunting white birds for their feathers. We have put away - or have tried to put away - hatred of people simply because they're different. We have put away senseless slaughter of buffalo, senseless disregard for the habits of nesting sea turtles, senseless destruction of delicate habitats. We should simply put away the notion of driving our cars on our most precious beaches. We should recognize that it was fun when we didn't know any better, that many of us will always treasure memories of whistling down the beach in an old Scout or pickup truck, that there are shoeboxes in all our closets filled with snapshots marked "Aug 58" or "June 61".


But as Chris Rich put it so beautifully today, There comes a time. We don't need to drive on these precious beaches anymore. Today is that time.



Editorial note: Chris Rich is the President of the Friends of the GTM Reserve. In the interest of full disclosure, I'm honored to serve on that board with her, and to serve with all the Friends and volunteers whose mission it is to educate, support research and perhaps most critically of all, ensure stewardship of this breathtaking resource.

Without a map

Today marks the 21st anniversary of the very first Fathers' Day celebrated by my Dear Old Person. One of our dear sons was born in the fall of 1989, and the other in the summer of 1991. Neither I nor my Dear Old Person had much of an idea of how to manage either event, both of us having more or less lost our parents through various mysteries and accidents of familial history. Some of these reached, apparently, into the very antecedents of Scandinvian geneaology; the Danish history when peeled away was particularly lurid. In my own past were the shadows of Appalachia and a long exile, useless for the charting of a map into the future. Nevertheless, we joined hands and stepped off into the void, somehow managing to bring two amazing young men along with us as we sidestepped or waded right through joys and troubles, just as most people do every day.

Joys came. Small boys creating language together, racing each other for ridiculous accomplishments, gradually emerging like sculptures with marble dust blown away in painstaking gusts to reveal completely different personalities. Large boys, making music and sports and smells, eating like Biblical plagues, teaching us, lighting the corners in ways we'd never have expected. Through these years my Dear Old Person worked quietly but constantly to make more money, to be something more than his father had been, to make his sons proud, to give them something other than what he recalled. What he recalled, in fact, he said little of, much of it seeming too strange or frightening to bring into the present. He spent as many minutes as possible with the fists of small boys pulling on his beard, with the voices of small boys crowing at him as he fixed broken tricycles or set up antique electric trains under the tree at Christmastime.

Troubles came. Some were small and uneven, those day-by-day things every family finds its way through. The loss of his father, inch by painful inch, to Alzheimers and anger, was large and deadly, causing fractures and fault lines along which the whole family broke like waves over rocks; the aftershocks of which remain with us these 10 years later. Through all these troubles, there were these amazing boys. And there was this amazing father, who persevered through all adversity, strong and stubborn and sometimes frightening. From the Wisconsin links to the old country, I often heard the voice of Aunt Thelma: "You can always tell a Dane, but you can't tell him much." Today we work our way around a progessive neuropathy that means we dance constantly around the physicality of day-to-day living. This walking is all done without a map, for there are no directions given with such diagnoses.

But it's not all that different from kids, really. We've had to dive into who we are, where we came from, what defined us. We've had to face things square on, or decide not to face them. We've gotten up in the morning and put on our clothes and started the days. We've laughed our heads off with our treasured friends, and cried our heads off with them. Or we've exchanged glances or hugs that transcended words, and been grateful for such blessings. Always there's a sense of the grace given to those who are long-bound, long-handfast wives, husbands, partners. We make promises of love for better or worse, richer or poorer, sickness or health. There is no map for delivery on those promises. And yet...and yet: it is possible to find your way, walking together, making best guesses, trusting each other, without a map.

So: join me today in the celebration of Fathers' Day, recalling those who have done their best and gone on, and those who still do their best every day. Happy Fathers' Day. Blessings to us all.

Simple, under robin's egg blue

The weekend draws to a close, and in northeastern Florida it's been a wonder. Clear, comfortable days under stunning skies as blue as diamonds wish they were, full of birdsong and hope, beckoning like sirens toward Spring. Too early!, our minds say, but to our hearts and our gardeners' hands, the lure is almost irresistible. And so at our house, we've spent much of the day simply sitting under the perfect turquoise sky, watching breezes ruffle the Spanish moss, being grateful for our blessings.

Among these, as my dear friends and readers will know, are counted simple foods. These are the foods we would all put before our families had we the time; these are the foods for which we yearn, not because they present the challenges of our favorite chefs de cuisine, but because they require little more than the investment of time, a commodity that often seems just beyond reach. As we sat tonight, watching the dusk come, listening to the last evensong of the birds, we prepared for a simple meal of roast chicken and potatoes with salad.

Roast chicken breasts are easily prepared on a two-tiered gas grill, using whole chicken breasts with skin on. Salt and pepper, and place on the topmost rack of your grill. Cover and allow to roast until the skin is golden brown the the thickest part of the meat tests done. Using those new, delightful tiny potatoes as a compliment to the roast chicken, I toss them lightly with olive oil in a small cast iron skillet and scatter with a touch of kosher salt. The skillet can be placed under the roasting chicken after half an hour or so of roasting; chicken breasts with bone and skin will need an hour or so - perhaps a bit more - to cook while the small potatoes take 30 or 45 minutes. When they're done the small potatoes need nothing more than a touch of pepper. This evening I split them and topped with a tiny spoonful of feta cheese, but no one knows your people better than you. Feta, fine cheddar, or nothing more than pepper: simple, simple. Finally, a bag of salad (yes, I did use a bag o' salad; as I've often said here, shortcuts have their places!), added fresh watermelon and croutons and supper was ready. The bright sky, which had verged on a bright robin's egg blue all day long, darkened until the silhouettes of trees and moss were backlit by shadow.

We moved indoors to simple food and company, and wish you all the joys of your own.

Wisconsin

We inherited the Green Bay Packers from my father-in-law. He was born in 1920 in the curiously-named Poy Sippi, Wisconsin to Danish parents who still spoke Danish at home. His early years were spent farming in rural Wisconsin. In young adulthood he lived in Beloit and found his way to Chicago and eventually far to the south through the changing fortunes of the War. In old age he was afflicted by Alzheimers and was variously cranky, difficult and downright mean. In some ways it might be fair to say that parts of our family were destroyed on the rocks of his personal shipwreck, but that's a story for another time, my dears. This evening, we're thinking of one tiny connection that has successfully persisted as we watch the NFL playoffs and rally, as always, around the Pack.

This morning we happened upon an old movie on TCM. It was a typical Margaret O'Brien movie of the mid-40s, sentimental and simple, yet resonant thanks to a cast that included Edward G. Robinson and a screenplay by Dalton Trumbo. Our Vines Have Tender Grapes, it was called. Set in Wisconsin among Norwegian farmers, it had faint echoes of Pop's childhood, seen through the eyes of Hollywood, of course, but no less unmistakable.

A year or so before we were married - and many years before the perceptible effects of Alzheimers - we traveled to WIsconsin to visit Pop's family and see the places he'd known as a young man. It's a beautiful place with its great spaces caught in boreal forests that must have reminded all those Scandinavian emigrants of the snow-bounded and blue-skied lands of coastal and inland waters they'd left behind. And though the geography and some of the cultural fine points seemed foreign or even exotic, there was - and is - a common sense of warmth and openness between those of the south and those of the midwest as though they are cousins of cultural etiquette. Certainly they're cousins of the table; there was never a more abundant, homely, delicious board than the one we shared with Pop's sisters and their families. They were kind, generous and unfailingly polite, their pronounced northern midwestern accents shaped by nearly-forgetten Danish and Norwegian cadences. One of these aunts and her husband would, some years hence, travel to Florida for Pop's funeral at considerable inconvenience simply because it was the right thing to do, and for the love his sister always kept for him.

Long years later, we cheer faithfully for the Packers in memory of Pop, letting the sharp, jagged memories of recent years recede into the distance. It's still good to recall the words of Aunt Thelma, a Norwegian girl married into the family and often-uttered where Pop was concerned. "Well, you can always tell a Dane," she would say. "But you can't tell him much."

Go, Pack, go.

The robins are coming, the robins are coming

Out with the old and in with the new, or perhaps: Let us put by that which we've outgrown or outworn or simply need no more, and let us take up and celebrate that which brings us learning, growth or most emphatically, peace. And let us remember to cherish what lies between. It can be so dangerously easy to envision only The Old and The New, without consideration for all that copious territory describing the rest of our lives. And most of that doesn't need to be thrown away, or embraced for the sake of its novelty. Most of that wide expanse simply needs to be tended.

Important things for tending: Robins. Beautifully plump red-breasted American robins arrive here every year, but the time of their coming can vary widely. We caught our first glimpse this winter just before Christmas, about December 23. It was a small flock, and they disappeared too quickly to be caught in photographs. Just a few days later, on December 30, the trees were suddenly filled with their voices (which really DO sound oddly like something a Victorian writer might have described as "chirrup-ing"), and their curious explorations on the ground, characterized by a good deal more hopping than flying. So much hopping and interrogation of the ground do they do that they provide excellent subjects for photos. In the photo at the top, here, there's at least one robin, but I defy you to find it. This is partly because I am a woefully inadequate photographer, and partly because I seldom listen to the wisdom of my dear old person on this, even when he stands at my elbow with a much better camera than my phone could ever offer. But it's there. And in spite of the general gloom of the landscape and the date on the calendar, that virtually invisible little bird spans the continuum of The Old and The New with a simple reminder. Spring will come.

As the chilly days wind along and we wait for more immediate proof of the spring for which mid-winter is the harbinger, we observe with familiar markers. Often the markers, the reminders, take the form of food. Here in the south, we mark the arrival and passing of the New Year with a plate like this one. Some people call it Hoppin' John; when I was growing up it was just "peas and rice", and everybody knew the peas in question were black-eyed peas cooked with ham and served over rice. Everybody also knew, or seemed to know, that the foods symbolized something, each with its unique significance. These symbols are lost to me personally; I only know that it's good luck to have this meal on New Year's Day, and that the whole thing turned out especially well this year. I thought I might talk about old and new by sharing the "how" of the cooking here. Standard apologies to my vegetarian friends.

This whole undertaking is made easier if you cooked a ham for Christmas. If you did, you have a ham bone and/or some pieces of ham you can cut up and use to season most of the meal. If you didn't, and you want to approach the meal from a traditional standpoint you'll have to face down the mysteries of ham hocks on your own. Good luck. For our purposes let's assume you DID cook that ham, or that you're adjusting for vegetarianism as you go along. So: there are, in our family, four main components to prepare.

Black-eyed peas must be bought dried and prepared according to package instructions. At my house this means simmered until done with the ham bone, some kosher salt and some Texas Pete.
Cornbread is prepared according to your own lights. At my house, this one has one of the shortcuts I advocate as a cook and a relatively sane person (readers will know that I believe cooks should identify and embrace those shortcuts with which they can live, and should heartily reject those with which they cannot). I use a Martha White cornbread mix shortcut, with the caveat that one cannot add sugar to cornbread. There it is, and I stand by it. Gather ye cornbreads how ye may.
Rice is critically important. In my kitchen we use a half-and-half combination of organic brown and basmati rices, both of which you can get at the grocery store. Simmered together, they fill the kitchen with a delicate aroma that takes its part in the whole of the meal's experience.
Greens are different every time I cook them, but this year they're splendid. I prefer collards for the mild flavor and one of the shortcuts I can abide is the purchase of them pre-cleaned and more or less ready to cook. This year I coated a cast iron skillet with olive oil and added very finely chopped onion, just enough to make a layer in the skillet. As the onion cooked to translucence I added about a teaspoon of kosher salt, a couple of teaspoons of sugar and several dashes of white wine vinegar. I thought something delicate like pear-infused vinegar would have been lovely, but no such luxury lay to hand. I also thought some red pepper would be a good addition. I was out, but in the top of my pantry was a small packet from a local pizza joint, enought for a slice of pizza. Perfect. A quarter cup or so of water de-glazed the skillet and the greens were added slowly to allow them to cook down. A pound of collard greens, when cooked down in a 10-inch cast iron skillet, results in about enough to serve 4 or 5 people, but it takes awhile. This cooked most of the afternoon, and when finished looked more or less like this photo.

Happy New Year and thank you for continuing to return to read, despite the erratic occurence of posts. As 2012 begins, one of my goals is to meet you here more often, for I am grateful to find myself learning and growing with each interaction. For now, peas and rice are on the table. Let's eat.

Midwinter's approach

What magicks come to us on the changing wings of the weathers of autumn, as midwinter draws near and we must remind ourselves of the beauties of cold weather and the far-off hope of spring? These are all known to and cherished by us all. We gather by fireplaces; we cook amazing meals. We raise our glasses; we remember to hug each other, even when laughing at timeworn tales and jokes. We remember.

And as warm and sentimental as that notion may be, we also look into the faces of the new and the unexpected. My Dear Old Person and I spend as much time as we can walking the beaches we love, and he is always hoping against hope for Treasure. Really. You never know. Someone's 18th century silver might wash up any old day. But the unexpected turns up all around us: in this case, The Unexpected showed itself in the form of rare, gloriously beautiful Sandhill Cranes, who made a landing in a quiet field near Publix. We've often heard them in quiet spring mornings at Gatorbone, where their ritualized dance of romance is unmistakable. But we hardly expected to hear them - or dear, me, SEE them! - casually feeding in recently cleared fallow land so close to A1A.

We took pictures. We stared. We might have drawn a crowd, if we'd been watching North Atlantic right whales on the beach. It was a late afternoon, overcast and quiet, as though some glamour had been cast; perhaps the most precious among us were kept safe from much notice. So here they are; with or without the glamour my guess is you'll see right into the magick.

So what particular beauties are on offer when the clouds lower in the skies and the winds take their chill from the northeast? The season of gift-sharing draws nigh and the long, dark afternoons can make time for refining stitches. Colors and textures, contrasting and complimentary: matches you thought would work really don't, and matches you didn't expected can be made as the threads and textures show themselves in subtle winter light and shadow. We had a lovely, quiet holiday dinner. I hope you did the same, along the scale of boisterous and lively most pleasing to your own tribe. Warm leftovers and helpful hands foreshadowed the magick of mid-winter at our hearthside, leavened by windblown beach walks and shared hopes. Welcome, Christmas (and thank you, Dr. Seuss):
Fah who rah-moose Fah who rah-moose
Welcome, Welcome Welcome, Welcome
Dah who dah-moose Dah who dah-moose
Christmas day is in our grasp, So long as we have hands to clasp So long as we have hands to clasp...



MadriGalz excitement may just possibly skew this, slightly. Stay tuned for performance details, but we know we'll be appearing at Creekside Dinery and Saltwater Cowboy's on December 17/18 and 22/23.

Queen Palm Sky

October has arrived, and with it the sharp blue skies we long for during the heartless, endless, breathless summer afternoons. With or without the filter of the tall queen palms, the blue is so deep that it stretches to infinity. And this is just our plain old front yard. Welcome back, October, with your reminder of all the promises of Fall. And welcome back, me: I have been long away from this beloved place of words, whispered and shouted, measured and thoughtless, balanced and unhinged. Welcome back, me, to the sharing of reflections and recipes and dialogue. I've been writing (lest you think I'd just been reading novels and eating bonbons these months. Oh, wait: come to think of it, I HAVE been reading novels and eating bonbons. But I've been writing, too, really). I've been writing over at GTMReserve and on a much smaller scale at BandBackTogether. They're a wide range of beautiful, for a range of reasons too wide to summarize here. Go forth and read.

And some things haven't changed. My dear old person continues to walk through pain. The small feet in the middle are mine; the big ones on the outside are his. Those little round dark spots on top of his are as browned by the sun as mine are all over, thanks to the small holes on top of the Crocs he wears most of the time for comfort. Neuropathy continues to make it more comfortable for him to walk with them on, rather than barefoot, even on the sculpted white sand on the beach. Chronic pain is a vague presence in most of our experiential vocabularies - mostly we take an aspirin or some ibuprophen and our headaches or backaches ease enough so we can think. Chronic pain that hovers above 5 or 6 on a scale of 1-10 isn't something most of us have to deal with, or even think about much, unless we suffer it ourselves or care about someone who does. For my own dear person, a walk on the beach sometimes shifts the balance of focus in his brain and allows pain to be shunted aside, at least for a little time. Walking with the power of Great Mother Ocean to one side and the prosaic but intriguing possibility that his metal detector may find a Spanish galleon on the other serves to switch some neurons or synapses off or on; we do not question too closely. We try to accept the gift as it is offered. My feet get brown, his open top-spots get brown; we laugh.

The long, comfortable weekend draws to a close with a touch of gold lighting the blue sky, peeking from behind this rooting angelwing begonia and its garden companion of little frogs. That glimmer of perfect light seated in the west touches the last of the streaky white clouds with pink and beckons the songbirds and fat brown marsh rabbits to their last meal of the evening.
Cardinals peep from every corner of the yard, reminding one another that the bird feeders are full. Barred owls settle themselves into the tall oak trees, obscured by great beards of Spanish moss, repeating their timeless call-and-response just above the canopy.

The kitchen waits quietly for me. I've promised comforting pan-fried cubed steak, mashed potatoes and milk gravy, corn and asparagus. It is at least as comforting to me to cook them as it is for my family to eat them. Did I mention pictures? Next time, my loves. Next time.