Category Archives: Home

October 21, 2012 · 3:40 pm

Places of Magic

I’ve always liked this vine-topped stone gate about a half mile down Cedar Lane from the Cabin.

So mysterious. It would appear to lead nowhere, but appearances can be deceiving. Maybe it’s the entry to the skeleton dance, or the blue jay coven, or maybe it’s where Oliver goes when he disappears at night, where he hangs with the foxes.

Went to another magical location this afternoon — Oliver led me through the raspberry prickers in the woods to a mystically open hillside with a spread of golden leaves, the glow of autumn hanging in the air — a Brothers Grimm kind of place. Then I pried out of the pit hound’s smiling mouth a small yellowed bone with a knuckle, exactly like the orphan’s digit in The Orphanmaster. The signet ring in the book would have been too much to ask, I guess.

Leave a comment

Filed under Dogs, Home, Jean Zimmerman, Nature

October 17, 2012 · 3:08 pm

Fire Starter

The winter firewood came today, three face cords worth, and stacking it had its usual perspiratory pleasure.

What it made me think of was The Odyssey (we’ve been listening to Ian McKellen’s superb rendition) and that incredible moment when Telemachus and Odysseus  recognize each other in the hut of Eumaeus the swineherd. I see their amazed reunion as taking place beside a blazing fire in the center of the shelter, an open hearth, and just imagining the scales falling from the eyes of son and father makes me shiver. Fires have been witness to the most sublime moments of history, and the worst.

“Chop your wood,” said Thoreau in Walden, “and it will warm you twice.” Or thrice, with the memory of the fire afterward, or four times, with the heating pad on your back. Bring on winter. Our bear of a fireplace is ready.

Leave a comment

Filed under Home, Jean Zimmerman, Poetry

October 11, 2012 · 2:37 pm

Secret Receipts

There is something I’ve always loved about collecting vintage softbound cookbooks — whether put out by community organizations or companies to hawk a product — in addition to their lavish artwork and insane notions of food. That is the always hoped-for moment when an old fashioned, hand scribbled “receipt” (as they used to say) flutters out of the pages onto the kitchen countertop. Whether describing the method for putting up  green tomato pickles or for baking a strawberry-Jello cake, these faded, spidery notations have always seemed to me a lifeline to the past, a past that is hurtling away from us so quickly that soon we’ll only read about the matriarchs who personalized their recipes in books. It’s hard to say which is sweeter, the notes of my own forbears, my grandmother or great aunt or mother-in-law, or the cooking wisdom of a homemaker I’ll never identify. In any case, I tuck each artifact back into its place between the pages, so I don’t have one to show off here at the moment. I can display some of the cookbooks, though…

Check out this nice piece by Michael Popek on this subject in the Huffington Post, illustrating his attempt to “keep the cycle alive.” He even had the sense to document the recipes before sticking them back in their time capsules.

Leave a comment

Filed under Art, Cooking, Home, Jean Zimmerman

September 23, 2012 · 10:48 am

The Frog Who Wouldn’t Leave

This guy simply sat there on the porch, just outside the front door, as Gil, Oliver and I passed him back and forth this morning. Awaiting an invitation?

“Theories pass. The frog remains.”    Jean Rostand, biologist

2 Comments

Filed under Home, Jean Zimmerman, Nature

September 18, 2012 · 10:31 pm

A Little Bit of Not Much

Mini-tornados whipping the treetops, branches cracking to the ground, frogs jumping across the wet roads… when you’re inside watching movies about wind and trees and wet roads…

Leave a comment

Filed under Home, Jean Zimmerman, Nature

September 15, 2012 · 1:38 pm

Who Owns This?

Organizing my desk, I unearthed this note authored by my kindergarten-aged nephew Jasper. It’s so handy, I’m going to switch it around just to keep things straight — to my laptop, my phone, my knitting, my Kindle, my lip balm, my Klonopin…

Who Owns This?

Leave a comment

Filed under Home, Jean Zimmerman

September 9, 2012 · 9:46 am

Croissants at Rest

The butter being whacked first thing this morning, as per Julia Child’s intricate instructions, with an attentive audience.

After the dough is done “resting” a few more times, we undertake the following steps with military precision.

We don’t have the specialized cutter Child prescribes (it looks an awful lot like a mysterious wedding gift we saw Celeste Holm scrutinize  in High Society last night) , so we might have to use an apple corer or a cheese grater. We should be done six hours from now.

In the meantime I’m going out to the garden to admire the morning glories and try to make myself weed.

Leave a comment

Filed under Cooking, Dogs, Home, Jean Zimmerman

September 6, 2012 · 2:44 pm

Wilde Child

Late summer: sunflowers hanging their tiger cub heads, cicadas in full throat, ripe tomatoes slumping to the ground. And I just finished the article I’ve been working on for the Times, so I’m happy. It’s about a brownstone on the upper east side whose owners worked for seven years to restore it to its high Aesthetic era appearance — that’s the 1880s to those of you who are not Oscar Wilde devotees. Wilde himself toured the U.S. in 1882 promoting the Aesthetic Movement and shocked people with his sunflower-boutonniere. The interior of the house I wrote about is actually pretty shocking as well, so stuffed with an elegant chaos of wallpapers and gothic furniture, portieres and floor urns that it is hard for the eye to even take in. I’ve never seen a house like it. But wonderful in its own way. I’ll give a link when the article runs.

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”  Wilde

Oscar Wilde

Leave a comment

Filed under Art, Fashion, History, Home, Jean Zimmerman, Photography, Writing

September 2, 2012 · 9:28 pm

Eating Weeds

‘We ate weeds,” said a writer who had lived through the Great Depression.

That statement has always impressed me. Are they actually digestible? How would you cook them — steamed like artichokes, boiled for hours like collards, sauteed with a little butter like spinach. No butter during the Depression, maybe margarine instead.

But today I am wondering just what weeds they were — I know people who relish purslane, but the redwood-height plants that shouldn’t be in my garden aren’t purslane. We went in and pulled out a wheelbarrow full today, after putting the state of the garden out of mind for the last month or so.

Two things prosper there. Sunflowers, and eggplant. The sunflowers are mammoth and hang their heads like old fashioned shower heads. They all face out of the garden, toward the swamp, so we see their backs exclusively. Purple and white, the eggplant grow heavy, their skins shining in the sun. Actually there’s a third, the morning glory vine, producing dozens of cerulean blossoms every day. This is the first time in my life I’ve successfully grown morning glories.

But the weeds are still the main crop.

Leave a comment

Filed under Cooking, History, Home, Jean Zimmerman

August 31, 2012 · 9:28 pm

Our Friends in the Tall Grass

Okay. Three four-foot-long garter snake skins in the south yard, and one slowly slinking four-inch-long tiger slug, Limax maximus, in the north yard, all within the past few weeks. I am ready to pull on my tall leather boots when I go out to turn on the hose to water the garden. Or better yet, fob that task off on somebody else.

Slug Patterns

Leave a comment

Filed under Home, Jean Zimmerman, Nature

August 26, 2012 · 4:58 pm

Morning Glory Pesto

Minestrone a la Marcella Hazan for dinner with some Cabinworld adjustments:

onions, farmer’s market carrots, no celery in the house at the moment, farmer’s market potatoes, half a home grown zucchini, farmer’s market green beans, no cabbage at the moment so instead home grown collard greens, pre-enjoyed by garden bugs, homemade chicken broth and all the tomatoes that we can find ripe in the garden (no canned tomatoes at the moment)

for the pesto: home grown basil, tall and healthy but used as a climbing stalk by morning glory vines, combined in the blender with slivered almonds (no pine nuts at the moment), Noreen’s home grown garlic, olive oil and good cheese

While we work down in the basement kitchen it is glorious end of summer above outside, the temperature perfect, a whispering breeze. We’ll have to eat outside. Again. How long can this perfection go on? Like the minestrone, perfect encompasses imperfect as the beautiful end of summer includes the bare fact of the end of summer.

Leave a comment

Filed under Cooking, Home, Jean Zimmerman

August 23, 2012 · 7:51 pm

Shedding Skin

Four feet long from snout to tuckus, that’s the length of the snakeskin we found by the water spout today. That’s an impressive creature. Did it live under the wooden shingles of the house, as Gil proposes? The shedding itself must be beautiful, if terrifying. A snake causes a rip by rubbing against a rock or log (or shingle), something rough, then wriggles out, splitting the tissue along the way. The patterns on the new skin exactly match the patterns of the old, but the new skin is luminous, almost transparent.

Leave a comment

Filed under Home, Jean Zimmerman, Nature

August 22, 2012 · 8:18 pm

Green Tomatoes and The Orphanmaster

Funny, as I was standing in a Wisconsin farm kitchen prepping tiger-striped tomatoes for salsa two days ago…

Ripe Heirloom Greens

The Orphanmaster was making the top of the bestseller list for Boswell Book Company in Milwaukee.

It happens to be a great bookstore, with about the most energetic proprietor — Daniel Goldin — I’ve met along the way this summer.

Tonight I cooked with tomatoes out of my own garden, and ate outside to the tune of late-summer cicadas. The creeping in of early Fall. I’m going to update this site with coming events, and I’m looking forward to talking more on The Orphanmaster, having grown attached to my picture presentation (maps, red heels, fur hand muffs, etc.) and peoples’ enjoyment at seeing first-hand evidence of the character of 17th century New Amsterdam.

But I’m also ready to go back to Savage Girl, my new book, make it better and send it along its way to publication.

Leave a comment

Filed under Cooking, Home, Jean Zimmerman

August 21, 2012 · 7:22 pm

Homecoming

Driving east on I-90, a change after yesterday’s guinea chicks toddling along the pasture edge after their mother. But return home to Cabinworld we must. Gil craves his writing desk, I want my own bed and down time after the last, Midwestern leg of the book tour, Maud to trade her tractor and farm boots for anthro texts and NYC stilettos, Oliver to return to his secret places In the cedar grove above the marsh. It’s been a busy-sweet season, now, as always in Fall, renewal comes with the crisp air.

Leave a comment

Filed under Dogs, Home, Jean Zimmerman

August 21, 2012 · 12:36 am

The Hen House

Stick your hand underneath a brood hen, reaching through the foot-long window of the chicken coop, if you want to experience pure fluffy warm fertility. Above you the sun is a hot yolk on a Delft blue platter. The bird you confront as she nests in her small space is soft, her almond-brown feathers almost more yielding than fur. Beneath her the eggs, a half dozen of them, laid and left there by the other birds for the brood hen to nurture with her heat. The sun is an egg in the nest of the sky. The tomatoes in the garden by the way blaze red as the sun. The world turns on this one moment, your eye confronting the speckled eye of the egg.

1 Comment

Filed under Home, Jean Zimmerman, Nature