A little leftover pie crust just sitting there.

A big bag of frozen berries.

A memory triggered. Of the intense comfort food that it was when I was given a single-person berry pie in a restaurant in Federal Way, Washington when I was far from my home, my husband, and my young kids.

When I was growing up, my mother often made homemade pies, a way to get more fruit into her kids and baked I’m sure with memories of her grandmother, who had a pie shelf built right into her kitchen: it was just expected that one would have pies on hand for whoever might show up on a random day, especially if there were young men to meet who might be courting one’s daughter. One could greet them most sweetly.

We picked fruit at pick-your-own farms, most often Catoctin Mountain Orchards in western Maryland. And so, strawberry pies, peach, berries, pear and lime, grape pistachio, it was always the best dinner ever when there was pie coming afterwards.

Then came the day I was in the Seattle area for my niece’s wedding and my brother, parents and I found ourselves with some time on our own and stumbled across that restaurant.

It was a great deal of mixed berries with just enough crust to hold them, not too sweet, just right, the way such things should be but that I had never seen from a commercial establishment before.  As close to mine or my Mom’s as it could have been.  It was so good that we went back and bought more to have for breakfast before our flights home.

A ten inch mixed berry pie just came out of the oven. Biggest pie tin I could find.

But the only thing that fit that leftover crust was a stainless steel 8 oz measuring cup, designed with a handle curving down at the end to steady the thing from flipping over as you fill it. Works on an oven rack too.

Its interior is now bubbly and cinnamony and just sweet enough and it is just right.

And on another note. This afternoon, Richard turned and exclaimed and got me to look up in time to see the second half as the female Cooper’s hawk (ie the bigger one) did a complete figure-8 around the two support poles to the awning and away.  “So fast. SO fast!” he told me. I so love our front-row seats!

This one‘s for DebbieR especially.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been pregnant, which means it’s been a long time since I had to monitor sugar intake for diabetes. I’m out of practice. I spent today cleaning, shopping, baking, pricing slicing dicing hoping.

I think I did okay by the folks who enjoyed my dinner.

And in the middle of all that prepping I sat down a moment and looked up in time to see the incoming hawk: a quick turnaround at the feeder, back to the telephone wires to get a good look in all directions as it shifted its feet to turn here, then here, then back across the yard towards me again, across my roof and away.

All in definitely under ten seconds. Blink. Wow.

Did you see the video Sherry linked to in the last post? This one, and thank you, Sherry. I have a birding friend who has seen robins fledging and she’s sure that’s what that was: a baby robin at first flight, playing air guitar. (I love how the little bird cranes her head up at the singer as he sings to her.)

Its momma expected it to land in the lawn but it wanted bluegrass, for sure.

Richard glanced out the window and remarked on how loud those birds were being.

Singing? Or just chirpy?

He considered that a moment, still looking at the feeder. Chirpy.

Went to two farewell parties today, brought a blueberry cake to each and coconut cream truffles as well to the second: the first was for someone who will be coming back next year, but the second was for a young family where the husband’s new job is near Denver.

If chocolate and blueberry cake can’t make that family stay, it can at least make them want to come back to visit. Even if I gave them the recipes.

I blocked the Findley shawl this morning and that fine yarn was dry in hours. It’s different. I like it.

I have two blueberry cakes in the oven and a timer on my Iphone loud enough to wake the deaf. Perfect.

There’s a Frazz comic written totally for me, even if the author didn’t know it. Cool!

Oh and, just because. The eagle doing the breast stroke at about the 1:20 mark. I have never seen a bird swim like this.

First, the chocolate.

About 25 years ago, when we’d just moved here, some friends dragged us over to a new shop at Stanford Mall with, You’ve got to try this!

That was the first time we heard the word truffles being used to describe something that was most definitely not a mushroom.

Cocolat was wildly popular, several other shops followed, and then a fire at the central bakery shut the business down, a still-lamented loss.

Alice Medrich, the owner, wrote several dessert books after that; Cocolat‘s  photos were an immediate delight to the locals–oooh, I remember that! And that!

She mentioned in her writing that when she’d first opened up, she’d started off making the truffles far too big but by the time she realized that, her customers were used to buying them that way and so, big they’d stayed.

I well remember that. That was what we’d been told we had to try and what we’d come back for for special occasions.

After Steve finished his first truffle last night, he mentioned (clearly not minding overly) that they were too big.

He couldn’t know I was thrilled nor why.

But he and she were both right: because a chocolate truffle should be small enough that you don’t have to hold it melting in your hand as you take several bites to get through the whole thing; too messy. Small is good.

I thought of that today as I decided to experiment with Michelle’s coconut cream. Could I make good dairy-free truffles?

One 6.8 oz box of that cream, a small one for the learning experience. I melted in 300 g of dark chocolate (I was determined to measure carefully this time.)

I just finished rolling small (!) balls of that now-chilled coconut ganache in my Bergenfield cocoa. The coconut taste is very minor in the background; the chocolate totally rules. The texture is just right. Nailed it.

There you go–I found it. That’s a bigger box than mine but a much better price than Amazon’s. Note that the shipping price is the same for one or ten and one of those big boxes is the right size for making two chocolate tortes. Just sayin’.

And the chickadee? You’re looking at the top of its head straight on at the camera at the bottom of the picture.

Last year my friend Kathy gave me a bagfull of soft fur combed from her dog and I set some out where the birds could take it for their nests. The Bewick’s wren appropriated an impressive amount at the Fall equinox: as Glenn Stewart of SCPBRG explains, bird behaviors at that time often somewhat mimic those of the Spring equinox, when the number of daylight hours vs dark is again equal.

So. There was a little dog fur left, and I had tufts of it set out among my amaryllis pots.

I looked up today to see what looked like a chickadee with a very furry blonde beard. She was diving into the fluff again and again, trying to get as much as her beak could hold.

And then she was off.

I went and got my hairbrush and pulled the last two days’ hair out of it; I was curious to see if I might be as acceptable as the dog. I went back to the patio, gathered up all the dog fluff in one amaryllis pot and put the hair with it.

More ! All in one place! Cool! She came back and her bill dove into it again and again, each time looking up and around to be safe in her surroundings: down, quickly up and left, right, down, peck, quickly up, left, right.

It took her a minute or two to be satisfied with her haul. She took to the air.

She seemed to have felted the dog fur into my long curled hairs with all those bobbings up and down: she flew in an uncertain wobble, as if the wind against her treasure was almost too much.

That little chickadee had a streamer of blond fur three chickadees wide and three chickadees long flowing proudly along behind her, like a small plane with a particularly large banner for the cheering crowd below.

There was a birthday celebration tonight of the Mormon Church’s Relief Society, the oldest women’s group in the world. Dinner was served.

And not only that. As it happened, we had Steve Rasmussen, the owner of Milk Pail, bringing cheeses for everybody to sample and rave over. (And believe me, we did.)

Steve carved open a huge wheel and set a gadget to it that I had never seen the like of: it was about the width and height of the wheel, and, as he explained to me in an aside, it was a descendant of an antique iron heated at the fireplace. It warmed that cheese right inside its rind and then Steve scooped the melting goodness out and handed it out on small slices of french bread. Bliss.

I told him I had gotten a call from my daughter in Michigan this very afternoon–she had run out of Milk Pail’s vanilla and nobody else’s came close. Help!

Remember when I was making all those tortes? I had enough cream left for one last pair, but six was kind of enough. So. By that point I had crushed together some bittersweet and a fairly dark bittersweet chocolate, and improvising a bit on the ratio with the amount of cream left over, I melted them into it and hoped. I mean, you can’t go too wrong there, even if it ends up as just chocolate sauce.

It was a bit thicker than the usual ganache. Good. Into the fridge. Then I rolled balls of it in Bergenfield cocoa and froze the truffles: manufacturing cream, dark chocolate, the best cocoa on the outside. That was it.

I took some with me tonight and offered some to Steve to thank him for making that cream available and just to say how much I loved what he’s done with his life with that business. He absolutely swooned over the first truffle and asked for a second. Did my heart good. Thank you, Steve!

And I will never wonder again what to do with any extra of that cream. Wow. That really really really worked.

Time to finally sit down and knit while I wait for the almond cake to come out of the oven (with a glance at the clock) and waitwaitwait how on earth did it get that late?

Oh. Right. And my blog time stamp is finally correct again.

Parker, meantime, is ready to help make cookies; they’re a little easier to walk around with.

The shawl is almost finished, but I’ve decided to make the edging longer: not because I have to, but at long last because I want to. It’s going to be gorgeous.

The friend who has shown up at my door several times when I’ve been sick with a quart of mango juice from Trader Joe’s just because it’s my favorite, knowing it would cheer me up, sent out a note today: did anyone have crutches for her height?

We have some, but they’re my son’s and he’s 19″ taller than she is, so I couldn’t help her on that one. But anyone who’s sprained both ankles needs a little something to cheer her up.

What I really wanted to do was help watch her little kids who were running in and out of the house, but that whole sun thing…

I put the chocolate torte in her fridge so she wouldn’t have to get up.

And it was enough.

p.s. Happy Birthday to my daughter-in-law, Kim! And to my son John yesterday.

I always make chocolate tortes in pairs. Saturday’s first went to Becca. The second didn’t know whose it wanted to be when it grew up.

Last night, “Do you want a piece?” And we could freeze individual slices for nibbling after that.

But somehow neither of us felt like it. We did, but…not… Huh. So, no.

He called me mid-day today. He has a co-worker who was the de facto mother to a young woman she’d been close to all the young woman’s life, and she has shared parental worries with him from time to time, trying to be a good mom. I met the co-worker when she came to our older son’s wedding four years ago; she’s a good soul and that young woman was very fortunate to have her.

Whether it happened today or whether today was the day she was able to say it, I don’t know, but she asked the nearest person to let their office mates know so she wouldn’t have to repeat it again and again: her god daughter had just died in a violent accident on the freeway.

“It’s meaningless, really,” I heard the grief in Richard’s voice, “but…if you could…” He was hoping I’d be willing to bring that torte to the office. He knew I would.

And how!

We acknowledged the issue of the sun at mid-day and a full parking lot. But I knew. If I didn’t do this in person myself I would regret it forever.  And so I put the car as close as I could and then in utter defiance towards all the limitations that that stupid lupus imposes on me without my consent, I walked it in.

Richard came, and arm in arm we walked to the other end of the facility. We were coming down one hallway, and as we saw her office just around the corner from the end of it, she wasn’t there.

Just as we started to wonder what to do, we saw her coming from the other hallway that right-angled there. She saw the two of us, recognized what was in Richard’s hands–I’d sent tortes to the office before–and ran and threw her arms around me.

“I’m so sorry.”

We threw our arms around each other again. “Chocolate helps,” she told us, with a wince and appreciation all mixed together in a silent tornado of emotion.

A cake by itself was meaningless. A torte that created the chance to be there for someone in a grief I can hardly imagine–it was what we could do.

But just in case someone who didn’t know found it in the office fridge and snitched some before she could get it home, I just pulled another pair out of the oven. I want to be sure to be ready again. You never know.

I was paying too much attention to the vicious speech and its aftermath, the twisting non-apology that came only after advertisers started to bail, to the much-ignored fact that one of Ms. Fluke’s points was that birth control pills are used in treating ovarian cysts and ovarian cancer, which is what her friend had needed them for.

I was one of many who wrote to the folks funding his show, but finally, enough–I needed an antidote to all that.

Her timing was perfect: my friend Jade called and came by in the afternoon. We’d run into each other at Stitches for the first time in probably three years and were interrupted, and it was such a joy to just sit down and spend some time together, this time with a cheerful, “Hi, Jade!” from Richard. And I do like to show him off. He’s a good one.

And then as soon as the sun was down enough, he and I went to Milk Pail to get manufacturing cream–and it was in stock this time! Yes! We got the last one. Totally lucked out.

And so (bwaahaahaa) at around ten, after checking with her beforehand to make sure she would be up and it would be okay, we delivered a late-night snack, a still-warm chocolate torte to Becca’s door.

It felt so good to see her so delighted. It did me much good. Chocolate torte: comes in self-serving sizes.

“What is your name?” she asked me.

My friend Becca had put out the word to a few of us that her neighbors were halfway across the world from home and were having their first baby. We had all been first-time parents ourselves; we knew everybody needs their mom when they’re coping with a newborn for the first time. You love them more than life itself and it is so very sweet an experience–but it is all so totally new for you and for the baby itself, who is learning to adjust to this day/night thing, needing to be held, fed, changed, bathed, wrapped, sung to, held some more, the parents needing time simply to take in the wonder that is this brand new human being who sometimes manages to get both eyes to look in unison straight into your own and into your whole soul.

We weren’t the grandmother. But at least we could help. Being a bunch of Mormons, we did the Mormon cultural thing: we signed up on Becca’s list to take turns bringing dinner for the new mom and dad to help them not have to worry about spending time buying or preparing food (or at least, not so much) while needing to hold their baby. Let the parents just be parents for a little while.

It occurs to me that this is our version of sitting shiva, at the start of life rather than the end, although both are so needed in their own times.

For me this was also a chance to make food that Richard loves and I do too but that I can’t risk eating much of anymore since my colectomy. Split pea soup? A favorite, although I substituted out the ham for chicken (rotisseried by Costco, gotta have a little salt to it) for cultural if not religious dietary reasons for the couple.  It simmered away for two hours, filling the house with the peas and the carrots and the big onion.

Into a disposable/reusable snap container.

Blackberry cobbler. Got about a third of the 13×9’s worth onto a sturdy paper plate, covered with plastic wrap.

Now the question was how to walk from my car carrying this in one hand with a cane in the other and my funky balance and not dropping anything–and I had just seen a perfectly able-bodied man dropping his 18 ounces of blackberries across the floor earlier when I was buying mine. The only big box around was–well, here, I could slide the items in sideways since this two-milk-jug one seems to be all there is. And then close up the box in case I stumble. And then carefully open the box once I get there so that she doesn’t put it upright like it looks like it ought to be and scramble the cobbler all over.

I got there. I rang the bell. A beautiful new mom with her dark-haired newborn over her shoulder answered, apologizing for her dog’s barking, saying it had become protective of the new baby.

Protective is good! I affirmed, hooking my cane over my arm to get it out of the way and getting that box open to show her what was inside, along with my card tucked in there: if she needed to ask any questions about what was in the food I wanted her to be able to reach me.

The dog was not convinced I was friendly. It helped keep the visit short; I put the food down where the woman asked, just inside the door. The baby was SO cute. (And so tiny! You forget how small they start…)

Such a short moment in our lives. And so important. Welcome to the world, little one! Welcome to motherhood, to the mom: we’re all here for you. We understand.

I am so glad I didn’t let the chance run away from me undone.

One of my husband’s co-workers saved a New York Times article a week ago and sent it home with him, wondering what we would think of it.  Front and center was all about what their food writer had declared to be Mormon cooking.  There was a big picture captioned “updated funeral potatoes,” a take on that classic dish for feeding a big crowd that was a novelty to the co-worker but not so much to us.

No I do not cook with canned cream of anything soup myself. Go for the classic au gratin here if anything, thanks. The writer would have you believe that means we’re a generation removed from living in Utah.

Actually, that part is true.

Meantime, a lot of life suddenly got squeezed into the last two days, too much. I hereby request a breather for a few, I thought earlier today.

And then I got exactly that. I got to meet DebbieR; she’s a peach. She was in the area briefly and we met up at Purlescence.

I opened that door, she was two steps away on the other side of it, she came towards me recognizing my face from the blog and told me she was Debbie and I instantly felt in the presence of a true friend. Everything there confirmed it totally. I feel so blessed.

She was traveling with some friends who were very good about waiting for us as we caught up as if we’d always known each other.

After they all left, I knitted quietly for awhile on a baby hat, getting my Sandi-Nathania-Kaye fix, and then excused myself: I needed to go home to babysit the phone I could hear on and my PC’s inbox.

I had gotten a message from Sam earlier: with ITP and lupus, there are episodes where you just hold your breath and pray real hard.  The last message we got sounded better; we’re hoping she gets a new med approved and that it will work because honey right now nothing else does.

Debbie had offered her to knit her fingerless gloves in her choice of color. Sam was thrilled. Debbie asked me if a lace pattern would allow too much UV exposure. Debbie is thoughtful and careful in addition to being generous with her time.

How do you thank someone who looks out for your child  and takes her into her heart as if she were her own? A shoutout to DebbieR: Thank you. It doesn’t begin to say it.

And yesterday.

My friend Andrea asked me a few weeks ago to make two chocolate tortes for her; sure. She brought me some of the ingredients, the most important to me being the manufacturing cream, because it is sold in an open-air store that has sun exposure issues for me.

So I had the rest of that half gallon of cream afterwards.  You can’t just leave it there. I baked. A spare torte ended up in the freezer.

Every time I asked Richard if he’d like it for xyz, for this group or that, for us to munch on or… ?, he would answer, not yet. No, let’s wait. No, let’s leave it in there for now. I thought I had good reasons to share it and free up the space; he just didn’t feel…

Okay, no problem. There was no rush.

Yesterday that co-worker’s wife got a call in the morning: her father had passed. She went off to work: where she was told she was being laid off after 27 years. She went to the doctor: she got told that yes, that was probably basal cell cancer.

She has a bandaid now for the part they could fix.

Richard asked his co-worker today to be sure. Then he asked me.

Oh honey absolutely yes.

And that is how the chocolate torte that Andrea made to come to be became a gift of friendship and community at the moment it was most needed.  Without my even having to go out in the sun to make it for them–I know how much that couple likes those tortes. It was something I could do. Did do, all ready.

They stood there in the dark in front of their house this evening, holding it gratefully, inhaling the thawing chocolate.

I thanked them for saving the article. We joked wryly over funeral potatoes. I told them chocolate torte was my real Mormon cooking.

Granny Smith apple crisp. Fresh-squeezed lemons from the tree with orange juice (to make up the shortfall) sponge cake: Betty Crocker circa 1952, substituting the juice for the boiling milk, adding zest from the lemons and using almond oil, no butter for Michelle…

There was a baking binge tonight, topped off with Michelle’s addition of raspberry almond bars after I got done with the oven. Sweet baked with sour, sugar with tang. Thirteen by nine three times over, with some of those cookies to be delivered to her friends.

Someone we love is leaving tomorrow, can you tell? Here. Eggs, oats, ground almonds, fruit, flour–food to nourish and see her off with. And for her to show up with.

What do people do who don’t have hearing losses around to entertain them?

Richard was reading the contents of the Odwalla fruit juice label aloud.

“Wait,” I stopped him–“one cup of flamingos?”

…*What?!*

Almost done. Bought the third-to-last pecan pie–no artificial additives, thank you Trader Joe’s,theirs is not only better than anyone else’s, it’s better than mine: they don’t ever end up with the filling hiding under the crust and the pecans tumbling around wondering where it disappeared to.

Family and food and pies. For me, the ultimate comfort food is tri-berry pie (raspberry boysenberry blackberry). There’s a restaurant near Tacoma, Washington that served just the best version of it, sized for one large appetite with many berries and just enough crisp crust to do the job.

My parents and my brother and I had all flown in for several days for our niece’s wedding the time I ordered that pie, hoping for the best and getting even better. I bet if you ask my dad the name of that place now, 15, 16 years later, he would know: Dad always remembers the places where we stumble across the best meals. Always. Our family’s previous trip to the area had included some exquisite clam chowder–I was three. It was the Seattle World’s Fair. So on this trip about 35 years later, he was going, I bet I can remember where…

We thought there was no way, but we were wrong, he found it: on the waterfront, with old Indian canoes and paddles on the walls for the decor and a floor that sloped up and down like hiking a small hill.

And I can hereby testify, their clam chowder was very good.

We went back later to that other place to get more of that perfect pie for breakfast before our flights home.

Oh wait–tomorrow. Almost forgot the cranberry sauce.  Can you boil water?  A cup of water and a cup of sugar going at a good roll, some say for this long, some say that long; doesn’t matter. Boiling. Then you pour in the bag of cranberries and simmer ten minutes till they burst for joy, stir if you feel like it. Easy as pie.

Pardon me while I go get that done too.

(Coming back to the computer.) Okay, sauce, done. But if you ever stop at that restaurant–what’s that name, help me out here, Dad–come on by. I’ll trade you for a chocolate torte.

(Which is what Richard’s aunt really wants us to bring for dessert tomorrow. It’s ready and waiting.)