Does cold weather make for better (clearer, more...well, golden) Golden Hours?

It's still cold here. In northern Florida we think it's cold when the daytime high is less that about 60 degrees; today we felt the warming trend because it was (I am not making this up) nearly 48 degrees, and this felt warm compared to yesterday, when the high temperature did not rise above 38. So here we are, and at least we have the beautiful golden light, for which, as one of our old favorites might say, O, be joyful.

And there is so much more to tell. I should tell about my children, my precious sons who changed everything for me; my dogs, who change everything every day, my dear husband, whose constancy began to shift my landscape long ago and has never wavered, and so much more about the friends, my heart's sisters, whose magic is with me every day. I should tell about the crazy work of Boxer rescue, where some of the dogs will look just alike in photos but whose spirits are like unto nothing else. I should tell about walks through our small bit of land, where winter sunsets really do look like this:


And no matter what the landscape light shows you, we're all in agreement that you need dessert. This is something I've made for the entertainers at the Gamble Rogers Folk Festival for some years. It's easy and wonderful. And it's one of those cake recipes that will start to convince you to abdandon cake mixes. When you make cake from scratch you find it's really not that much more trouble than using a cake mix. But what's most shocking is the difference in taste. I don't know what they do to cake mix, how they treat the flour, what they add...but I can tell you that one or two of my cakes (which aren't mine, really, and which I'll credit as we go) will change your mind. Really. So try this. I make this in two round cake pans, about 9-inch pans, because they can be shared. I know, I know. It's a rich, fattening cake. So make it and share it. A tiny slice of this much chocolate can't be bad.

Melt together 1 cup butter and 4 ounces unsweetened Baker's chocolate (you can reduce the amount of butter if you substitute a combination of butter and cocoa for the Baker's chocolate). Cool slightly and combine 4 beaten eggs, 2 cups sugar, 2 tablespoons of milk, and 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Add 1 cup sifted flour and 1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts (you can leave out the nuts if you like; I never use them). Bake in the two round cake pans I described or a 10 x 15 inch pan at 350 for about 24-26 minutes - and don't overbake. For the frosting (and you need to have this ready before the cake comes out of the oven), beat together 1 tablespoon of melted butter, 2 tablespoons of cocoa, 1 cup of confectioners' sugar, and 1 egg white. As soon as the cake comes out, pour this frosting over the top so the egg white is cooked. Credit where due: This comes from a cookbook called Southern Sideboards, a wonderful wedding gift Rodney and I received from Eileen Ronan (I have an amazing note from her but alas, my dears: a story for another evening) and is credited in that lovely cookbook to Mrs. Howard Nichols.

Make it. I can't wait to hear how you like it. Tomorrow I'll probably have a new story to tell you - I'm thinking a LOT about the intersections of people I love and how they've changed what I do every day. Until then, here is an evening picture of my own sweetheart and me, and a fond hope you'll stay warm and toasty on this chilly evening. Thank you to our dear friend Lorie, whose camera's eye is always affetionately open and who commemorated Gatorbone with this picture. Love, love, love.


P.S. Thank you to Dylan, resident copy editor. I'd be lost without him.

A winter walk, a glimpse of gold, and something to cook

So this is what it looked like, when I was warmed enough by layers of clothes and the briskness of our pace to be able to focus the camera. The wind was not quite howling, but was blowing hard and steadliy, as though it had promised its mother to do so and was afraid one of its aunts might drop in unexpectedly to check. This meant it was damned COLD at the beach, but considering the sudden, brilliant appearance of the sun and the astonishing blue of the sky, Rodney and I found we couldn't stay away. If you look closely at the sea shells you'll see a fine lace overlay in rainbow colors, the residue of the sea foam cascading all over the beach like wet tumbleweeds. We walked half a mile or so to the south, just a few hundred feet to the north, gathered a small collection of fossils, and began to think about a nice fire, a cocktail and the golden hour.

Clean up awaits, at home. Thanks to the continuing cold, the detritus accumulates and changes; the fallen branches need to be cut and stacked, the sad, melted cannas and elephant ears trimmed away, and so much more. But it's too sad, and anyway, it's too soon; there may be still be protection afforded by fallen plants to those growing in their shadows. So we wait. And today, waiting, we walked down the narrow path that connects our front yard with the delicate finger of the Tolomato River that folds back in upon itself and winds its way to us as Stokes Creek. The light changed quickly, as it does this time of year, and Rodney took photos.


I thought about what to cook, and though in the end we ate leftovers, I was prevailed upon by Dylan to share this favorite of his. When you have boneless, skinless chicken breasts, part of a bag of potato chips and some butter, this is the easiest way in the world to please the still-maturing palates of the young. Cut the breast meat into fillets and dip in melted, cooled butter, then dip in crushed potato chips. When I say crushed, I mean you should have your youngest family member take the bag of chips and do with it what they've always wanted to do: roll it around, crush and smash (taking care not to tear open the bag). When the chips are very fine indeed, dip the chicken in, and place it into a lightly greased baking dish. Bake at 350 or so for about 40 minutes or until lightly browned. Why do they love this dish? I have no idea, and I suspect my own mother may have learned it from Woman's Day or Ladies' Home Journal or some such magazine in the 60s. But though I can't explain it, no matter how many times I ask my sons how they'd like chicken breasts cooked - and I am telling you I have some perfectly marvelous ways to cook them - this is invariably their request. Kids. Palates. What a mystery. Never fear, my loves: I shall soon tell you the story of Julia Child, Le Pavillon, Jacques Cousteau, exotic birds, a Boxer dog and the Lamented Claude Sinatsch. Soon, soon.

For this evening, move a bit closer to your warm fireplace, wrap that soft, warm blanket a bit closer around your shoulder and if you have the luxury of a love to hold you close, do. Here is one last look at the fading view of the golden hour at our house tonight, and a look at another kind of cold-evening blanket, this one called Meg. But this, my darlings, is a tale for another evening.

And I prayed for snow

When I was a small child, it probably didn't snow at Christmas as often as it seemed to, but at least was cold around Christmastime and that meant there was at least the possibility of clean, white, magical snow. It was east Tennessee, and the Great Smoky Mountains stood nearby and, well, it was possible.

Anyone who has lived in north Florida knows that while cold weather is certainly possible, snow is just about out of the question, though not completely unknown. There was one winter in which the fort green, that beautiful expanse of green grass carpet surrounding St. Augustine's Castillo, was tipped with white snow. It was the same year I was sneaked into a local drinking establishment to hear Gamble Rogers, the same year I heard Lis sing for the first time...but these, my darlings, are stories for another time. Snow, it is.

So here we are: one of the first winters I spent in St. Augustine as something other than a tourist, Christmas Day was so warm the doors and windows had to be opened to let the heat from the roasting turkey out of the stifling kitchen. This is how it went in other years, too. Some years, a satisfying chill would descend for the holidays, making happy the women working in kitchens to bring forth perfectly golden brown turkeys and their men, out in the woods as soon as family obligations would grudgingly permit, where a deer killed in the bracing cold would keep longer on one of those 80-degree Yuletide mornings. It made kids happy, too, since those nice flannel p.j.s and fluffy sweaters Santa brought were so much easier to wear in colder weather. And all this aside...I couldn't summon the "I'll Be Home For White Blue Christmas Without You Chestnuts Roasting What're You Doing New Year's" feeling in the 78 degree sunshine. So I prayed for snow.

I have prayed for snow, asked Santa for snow, joked about asking Santa for snow, told my husband, my friends, my children that snow was all I wanted for Christmas every year for more years than I like to think about. And now we've had a 2-week long cold snap (can a "snap" really last as long as a fortnight?), with days that have barely been able to raise their drooping heads out of the 30s and nights that have been blown by the north wind into long hours of 20s, with wind chills almost touching single-digits. This morning, in fact, my prayer for snow was almost answered (maddeningly), though it seems to have skirted us here in north Florida and passed along to the south of us. And in its wake I find I am more than even grateful for our beautiful Golden Hour, in which the sun spills gently through the oaks and touches the Spanish moss ever so quietly.

Respectfully, I'd like to change my prayers, wishes and best hopes from Christmas snow to winter peace, without, perhaps, the drama of near-freezing temperatures for quite so long, and with, perhaps occasional reminders of glorious spring beckoning in the distance.



And in case you still need to bake something so your oven stays on and your house is warmed, I think you ought to get those big baking potatoes out. Scrub them, poke a few fork holes in them, and wash them well. Spray with some Pam, or rub with a touch of butter (my grandmother would have used bacon fat), and sprinkle with some kosher salt; bake until done. You can eat them tonight, or you can save until tomorrow and serve as you like with eggs for breakfast, sliced, drizzled with olive oil and roasted or chopped right up into your breakfast omelet. Oh, and for heaven's sake, do stop praying for snow.

Bringing home the beach

When the thermometer doesn't even touch 40 degrees, and a determined 20 mile an hour wind underscores the point, Rodney and I stay home from the beach. Which we hate, it being Saturday. Still, here's a reminder of what waits there for us. And of course it's always fun to look at the fossils we've gathered in the couple of years since we started, well, gathering. We're not sophisticated enough to think of ourselves as collectors. The truth is we didn't realized we'd been assembling bits of ancient history until a couple of years ago, though Rodney has found and kept boxes and bags and film cannisters full of sharks' teeth since he was a small boy. I hate to tell you how many of those film cannisters I threw away. Live and learn.

Completely by accident, this is how we learned: I was visiting my friend Suzanne's office and noticed a postcard pinned to her bulletin board, the kind of postcard you might get from a friend while they vacationed in Florida. It showed an assortment of sharks' teeth, from the very smallest to giant megalodon, even including an intact set of fossilized teeth an in enormous jaw, top and bottom. I said something like, "That's a nice postcard", adding offhandedly, "Rodney's got a jillion of those, I never seem able to see them, may I borrow your stapler," or words to that effect. She widened her eyes and a certain light touched her beautiful face. She said, "You do know they're all fossils, right? That they're all millions of years old?" I had no idea. But I can tell you this: I suddenly looked at the beach in a whole new way. And then something else happened to change my perspective: while walking down a white, sandy expanse of beach, I spotted a large black object about the size of the palm of my hand, scored with regular lines, rather like a piece of turtle shell. But it was clearly fossilized, both sides as glossy and shiny as something coal but so impervious to pressure it might almost have been coal, on its way to becoming a diamond.

Walking on the beach was now full of new possibilities. The long quiet walk, reflecting, meditating, simply being, was one option. Taking the dogs along for fast-paced, wildly enthusiastic walks was an option. And now, with the bright sun and a glisten lent by the water, it was more and more possible for me to see the ancient teeth. Turned by the magic of Mother Earth into pieces resembling jewels far more than remnants of prosaic things like teeth or bones, my fascination began to grow.



And though my fascination far outstripped my knowledge, the loose confederation of beach people again surprised me. "That Lady With the Little Blonde Daughter", it turned out, was called Allie, was also a collector, knew a great deal, and was at once humble about and generous with her knowledge. "Whale bone," she said. "And that's a drum fish tooth, oh, and that looks like verterbrae." She referred us to a good field guide, told us about a gem show she'd attended the previous winter where she learned LOTS.

One of the things I showed her was the multi-colored shark tooth shown in the middle on the left, also pictured (in that last photo) next to my foot so you can see the size. The group shot was taken by Rodney today as we looked over some of what's becoming our collection, yearning for one of those walks we've come to love. Perhaps tomorrow. I do have that pink scarf and hat Lis crocheted, and 9 or 10 jackets I could wear. The concentration called for by his metal detector often serves as an excellent medication for Rodney, although that, my dears, is a tale for another blog.

Stay warm, dears. It's a fine evening to have the oven turned on. If you feel like a rich dinner, homemade macaroni and cheese gives you a fine excuse to set the oven about about 325 and leave it on for an hour or more. I use some kind of pasta like penne or curly shells, a place for the cheese to hide itself and warm your mouth. Cook about 3/4 of a pound of it to the stage before al dente, when it's still really too crunchy to be ready to eat. Layer it in a 9" x 12" baking dish with whatever cheese you like. Sharp cheddar is good, if your people like it. A layer of pasta, a layer of cheese and repeat. Salt and pepper as you go. You can even use a reduced-fat cheese, if you like. Beat together about 4 eggs, depending on their size, and add milk (here again, skim milk helps reduce the fat, but you can use what you have) til you have about 2-1/2 cups of liquid; pour this evenly over the macaroni. Bake until all the liquid is taken up and the top is lightly browned. It's lovely with a romaine and Granny Smith apple salad. And you can leave the oven door open so that last warm breath fills your kitchen.

Cold days, blue skies and more remembering

Remember when I mentioned that stunning view to the west, from high up on the beachside tower at Guana? This is more or less what it looks like, though of course my phone pictures are far inferior to the serious ones Rodney takes. (Sooner or later, I'll get his work into my blog since I'm pretty sure he'll let me use if for free, but that's a photo layout for another evening.) Still, you get the idea. And since it's approximately as cold as it is in Outer Space or the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and therefore too cold even for crazy people like Rodney and me to walk on the beach, this picture will have to do for now. And it's been cold for a long, long time, at least, for those of us used to the brief cold snaps and quick warm-ups of north Florida where the proximity of the Gulf Stream usually means the cold evens out pretty reliably. It's been cold for so long that even things that don't usually freeze seem to have frozen.

I love the things in my garden (by which I mean, my whole messy yard) most that have been started from cuttings and have a history. There are Seven Sisters roses which bless us every May with cascades of pink clustered flowers; every one of these plants came from an ancient rose bush started from a cutting by Rodney's mother, 40 years ago or more. There is abundant wedelia, started for me by Lauren. It covers an otherwise bare section of ground, and in summer that cover looks like a carpet of miniature wild daisies, bright with yellow petals against green foliage. And two summers ago, Rodney took a cutting from my friend Katie's yard, one in which I had little confidence at the time. It was an enormous bush-turned-tree with large, lush leaves, punctuated by ridiculously large, gorgeous pink flowers.


They looked more or less like this, though it's hard to imagine how gigantic the flowers are: they're bigger than my hands, and the most delicate pink color, that pink you associate with babies. The one you see in sunsets now and then. And since my dearly loved Katie has been in Africa for 53 or 54 years, (that's a lie: it's only been a few months but it seems like years to me)give or take, that ridiculously overdressed shrubbery has been just a teensy bit like catching sight of Katie in my garden now and again. Only now it has frozen, its branches drooping sadly, the promising buds of flowers that clung to those branches right up til the freeze curled into brown husks and dropped to the garden's floor. And as sorrowful as this is, even its faded glory serves to make me think of Katie, to see her face, to remember that she'll be home soon. Soon, soon.

The elephant ears, which grow to what Mel Brooks might have called Ludicrous Size during those years in which frosts and freezes only brush past us quickly, almost unnoticed, have frozen into drooping brown stalks that look almost as if they'd melted. The canna lilies, those glamorous, flashy, long-legged beauties we can always count on to return in the spring, have melted into similar sad disarray. And yet I know that sleeping under the cold ground are the delicate wild violets I treasure so much that I forbid all yard work in their little acre, the small spot they've chosen for themselves under the convergence of a tall water oak and two magnolias. So the cold goes on, and I think of the coming of spring. Keep an eye out: I'll find a picture of those enchanted wild violets to keep us going until the breeze warms and the days lengthen and the sun's benediction returns.

Just keep warm, for now. Make onion soup for your people; you'll warm them, too, right on down to their toes. This is how I do it, in case you don't have a soup brewing in your heart right this minute.

Take about 4 or 5 onions, nice big ones, any kind you have - I like a couple of sweet onions and a big red onion, and a big white onion and even a shallot or two. Slice them thinly and put them into a cast iron skillet with some butter and olive oil. Salt and pepper a bit, to your taste as well as you can while you're still guessing. Cover the skillet and cook the onions for 15 or 20 minutes, and then take the lid off and pay close attention. You'll need to finish cooking the onions, reducing them drastically, stirring almost all the time. This will take another 15 or 20 minutes, and you can add a tablespoon of sugar or two to help the onions brown and caramelize. When they're done, really nicely browned and much reduced, sprinkle 3 or 4 tablespoons of flour over them and allow this to cook, too. You'll have to keep stirring. Deglaze the skillet with a little white wine, which will make a bit of a thick roux. Slowly add broth to this mixture and then pour this back into a nice big pot with the rest of your broth (you'll need about 4 cups of broth, all told, perhaps more if you want the soup to go further). The interesting part here is that Julia Child will tell you to use a homemade beef broth, but this why people think of French Onion Soup as being too labor-intensive to make at home. Nonsense. Use store-bought broth. Use chicken broth if you prefer, or even vegetarian broth. Let this nice mixture simmer for as long as you like, over very low heat, stirring now and then. It can simmer for half an hour or 3 hours, and if it reduces too much add some more broth or water. Taste occasionally to be sure you have the right amount of salt. When you're almost ready to stop simmering, add 3 or 4 tablespoons of good Port wine if you have it. If you don't, don't give it another thought. Immediately before you serve, stir in 3 or 4 tablespoons of good cognac, and again, if you don't have any, don't worry about it. Serve in the traditional way, with a piece of nice French bread topped with Gruyere cheese, heated under the broiler. Or you can make slices of your own or store-bought French bread, toasted in the oven at 300 degrees for half an hour, until they're golden, and melt some Gruyere or Emmenthaler on top; this gives you nice cheese-topped croutons and lessens the amount of cheese you'd use if you put it directly atop the soup. And if you're not eating cheese, fine. Just serve the soup with a nice salad and your family will be in heaven. They will forget that it's freezing, that the garden has melted, that the long winter has wrapped them 'round. They will, for a little while, think about how much they love you and each other and how lucky they are. That should hold us for a little bit, don't you think?

So much to learn, and Sole a la Meuniere

So, there is much to learn. For instance, the images in my last post are in exactly the wrong places. And reliable old copy/paste shortcuts don't work so well in the web-based Blogger app. Stick with me. I'll figure it out. In the meantime, by popular request, here is this evening's Eat Here recipe.

You can do this with really great fish, like if someone you know goes fishing offshore, say, or you buy the expensive stuff. But you can also use this for wonderful results on farm-raised tilapia. A la meuniere (I'll ask Lauren to keep us honest on this) is a dish cooked in the style of "the miller's wife", by which we mean, dusted in seasoned flour. The "sole" referred to in the recipe name doesn't have to be sole, or flounder, or any flat fish - it can be any fish that will bear up to pan cooking. So you trim the fish (any dark meat on fish will generally convey a stronger fishy taste) and prepare a cup or so of plain flour, seasoned with salt, pepper, and fresh chopped parsley. Dredge the fish fillets in flour, and brown them in a skillet with plain butter, turning once. As the fillets are cooked, remove from the skillet, place on an ovensafe plate and keep warm in the oven. When they're all done, you can pour the butter over the finished fillets and sprinkle them with leftover chopped fresh parsley.






At my house, it is being pointed out to me, this dish is actually the anchor for a menu. The fish is pefectly accompanied by our favorite cheese grits and a big gorgeous salad. Take the opportunity to make the salad glamorous by adding strawberries and walnuts, or watermelon and almonds...you know, whatever works in the season and brightens your table. The cheese grits are easy, and you can use cheese or not, as you prefer. At our house, we make grits according to the recipe and then add sharp Cheddar and red pepper; we often do this in our big old crockpot and everyone is happy. Cook this stuff and your people will be, too.

Cold days, blue skies and a monument

If you visit the northern-most beachside point at Guana Tolomato Marine Esatuarine Reserve, walk across A1A. You'll find yourself on a boardwalk-like structure, complete with a tower. Climb up. It's worth it. To the east you have a wonderful view of the broad ocean (insert North Atlantic Right Whale here, if you're lucky enough to see one). To the west you can see the fresh and brackish waters cuurving back and forth among the grasses; maybe you'll even see a sunset. From any perspective, it really is an amazing view. When you come down from the tower turn to the north. There will be half- or three-quarters of a mile of truly pristine white beach with houses off in the distance. If you keep walking, you'll see the flagpoles in this picture. Walk all the way up. There's more.

As our boys grew up and started to spend more weekend time in their own pursuits, Rodney and I remembered how we'd spent time in the years before those boys arrived. We rediscovered walking on the beach. We were astonished to find two completely obsessive-compulsive Fossil Hunters lurking unsuspected in our two hearts -- but that, my dears, is a story for another day. We realized that our dogs believe the beach to be a celestial realm, and that we...umm, more or less agreed with them. So we started to walk. And we noticed some of the same people doing the same thing, week in and out.

At first we simply greeted them in the time-honored Southern way appropriate for distant acquaintances, calling, "How're y'all?", or "Pretty day for it, huh?", and waving. We knew them as "Hippie Segway Guy" and "Black Bathing Suit Woman", and "Black Bathing Suit Woman's Boyfriend", and "The Couple Who Only Look for Shark Teeth". And then one day Black Bathing Suit Woman's Boyfriend changed things. We arrived in the parking lot one evening as they were leaving, and as they got into their car we rummaged around, looking for sunscreen and putting on our ugly old hats. "Oh, it's YOU," he yelled suddenly, "We didn't know you without your hats!" The had noticed us, too. (They probably had appalling names for us, too: "Fat Hat Lady" and "Metal Detector Man"? Metal Man and Beach Bag Lady? We hardly dared to think.) The very first person we noticed was a determined blonde woman who could often be seen dragging driftwood (where?) and diligently picking up trash was also, with equal dedication, creating something we've since come to think of as organic art. Wait. It's not revolting, I promise.

Driftwood Lady lef us to something we hadn't expected. It was a monument of sorts, the foundation of which seemed to be bordered by driftwood (but really BIG driftwood, as in creosoted 4x4s) and had been carefully defined by an arrangement of shells spelling out "U.S.A.". There was a piece of plexiglas, under which was a remembrance of someone's brother. Around this had been placed various collections of shells, fossils and the detritus of the ocean, re-purposed to expand this living, evolving sculpture.

>