I woke up this morning and grabbed my glasses. Through the clerestory windows I watched the tops of the trees duking it out with the near-hurricane winds.

We’re at 3.84″ of rain with another .5″ to go for the day, and then next week it will rain again. We just need snowpack in those Sierras, too. I’ve been watching my downspouts going crazy and wishing we had the means to capture our roofprint’s worth up there.

And so we stayed out of that and at home, grateful for power and heat, listening to it rain, rain, rain. The water came up a foot in our street. Not as bad as the happily boogie-boarding kids in ’98 and the homes across the street with water up to the electric sockets that we had then but threatening to be. The storm drains are old and long overloaded and one neighbor waded out into that water to see if he could save those homes from it and he quietly cleaned the leaves out of the way, here, here, here and if a fourth spot needed it he did that too. We would never have known except that another neighbor ratted him out online so that everybody could thank the guy.

One friend who did leave home said there was water sloshing right over the center divider on the freeway.

I’m fine with marveling over the photos rather than experiencing that sort of thing in person.

Our mail service has had issues, as I’ve occasionally mentioned, sometimes major issues, but today our guy was totally a hero: he came at about 7:30 pm despite the fact that most of the roads between the main post office and here were shut down by flooding and fallen trees, including the road it’s actually on. We heard him and I ran for a rain jacket and struggled to get it on fast enough and then called out into the night as I lifted the lid on the box, “Thank you!”

He answered from over next door, “You’re welcome!”

The CSA (community-supported agriculture) guy made it in, too, dropping off our farm-to-fridge veggies in the dark of the early morning, and in honor of his effort I had to use his greens at their peak. Fresh-picked red chard. Strip the hard thick lower parts of the stalks out of your way, saute the greens in a bit of very good *EV olive oil, that’s all it needs. A small amount of bacon bits topped it off in a perfect winter dish against the cold.

And who knew that slicing ripe Hachiya persimmons in half and roasting them at 450 for fifteen minutes would give them a texture and taste like Thanksgiving sweet potatoes with marshmallows melted in. Peel the skins off that were holding the stuff together and there you go.

It was a thought and a whim and something I will definitely do again.

They must have run out of the spinach that had been on this week’s checklist. They keep making me try out new things. Rapini greens? Looking at the bunch, I’ve never eaten…spikes…before. It’s just the smaller leaves acting all edgy like that, though, y’know, ’80’s punk style.

Not that I’ll mind breaking out that olive oil again.

———

*EV–extra virgin. By lax Federal law, an imported olive oil can be labeled as such no matter what its actual grade as long as it’s food grade, but California requires that if the olives are grown in this state, the bottle must contain what the label says it does. Buy Californian.

Torte, pies, *spiced pecans, did we forget anything? Past the cities, up into the mountains, winding through redwoods and over the reservoir (still looking awfully empty, but it’s about to rain for four days) and to the aunt’s house.

I debated explaining to a small child that her Aunt Allyson was our cousin and I, as her cousin (once removed), was Alison but I was not her aunt.

Eh. Just give her a few years. She was still figuring out that two people were answering to the same name.

The eleven-month-old started screaming during the prayer over the food, suddenly turning into hiccupy giggles. I didn’t peek to see who got to so thoroughly charm the baby back to happiness in the middle of the solemn pronouncement of thanks for all our blessings. Probably half the table.

Six and seven year olds, cousins to each other, taught me how to play the game Blink–and then, *blink*, they both pushed it away out of reach, done. We hadn’t played it yet: the fun part was teaching the grownup. They had taken turns carefully going over the instructions, each getting to do so twice, making sure I’d gotten it.

I was all ready to try it.

Nope–the younger one had won two games the last time they’d gotten together and clearly that success was not to be outdone by me. The pride, it needed savoring awhile, and her slightly older cousin was looking out for her like a big brother and backing her up on that with pride of his own in doing so. Both had big grins.

Dinner a little behind us, it was time for a–well, there were a lot of desserts. We had fourteen people and cherry, pecan, pumpkin, apple, chocolate silk pies, plus that chocolate torte. Fourteen, that is, if you include the baby. Uncle Nate felt sorry for the deserted pumpkin and helped himself to a slice–a small one by that point.

And then we braved the traffic, where so many other people were likewise returning from time with loved ones, and made it safely home.

*Spiced pecans

Have ready about three cups pecans toasted single layer ten or twelve minutes at 350 till they smell done. Will get crisp as they cool.

So, 1 c. sugar mixed with dash salt and a tbl cinnamon. Add 1/2 c water, stir, heat till it starts to boil, turn it down a bit, and let bubble away (not too high a heat) for at least ten minutes, NOT stirring, you don’t want crystals forming, till the temp is 236. (241 in the center in my pot, 235ish at the outer edges, using the infrared thermometer–good enough.) Add the vanilla (stand back, it’ll steam a little), then–and this is where it turns into real work–mix those pecans in, stir stir stir with a big wooden spoon, trying not to break them. Keep going till the mixture no longer makes long sticky threads but it’s all adhered to the pecans (and the pot). Turn onto a buttered (better) or sprayed (we had another dairy allergic there and didn’t risk butter) pan to cool.

Feed to people you love.

Had a must-take-it-easy day so I did. A random mention: my friend RobinM said something about cherry clafouti and I didn’t remember quite what that was and went on a hunt for a recipe and can now attest that this one is really good. (Um, and I changed it to half cream. Because someone had to use it up. And I used a lot less lemon zest because it was after the mega-dyeing thing and I was tired.)

But meantime, we loaned our Aquarium guest passes to our friends Phyl and Lee and they came back tonight with almond croissants from that Parker Lusseau bakery we’d tried to go to down there but that had been closed for the Fourth of July. So we finally got to try their famous pastries–they were worth the wait.

They got the last three almond ones so they added a plain, knowing I’d hoped for a bunch of extras for the freezer.

But the best part was having them over and listening to them talking about and showing photos not only of the Aquarium and Tahoe before that (Oh, we always see a bear *shrug* Wait, you *what?* Oh we always seem to camp next to someone who doesn’t follow the rules even with the thousand-dollar fine) but also of the hyperbaric chamber that as divers they had also wanted to go see, given that there was a tour today. Also in Monterey.

It’s for divers with the bends and for those with carbon monoxide poisoning–so you bet we were interested in what that thing looked like. I would have been airlifted to the one at Johns Hopkins years ago but for the fact that the chamber would have killed the baby I was pregnant with.

Phyl’s eyes got big when I mentioned that that’s when we found out there was no ambulance service back then in the town we lived in in New Hampshire, just a volunteer with a Suburu and hope. Gotta keep those taxes down.  At the hospital, they tested our blood levels and then turned to Richard and exclaimed, You DROVE here?!

(Carbon monoxide alarms are a good idea, folks. And the law in California now.)

I said that chamber looked like a tube-shaped ambulance interior: a bed to each side, ready to go. They described how the thing actually works. They could put up to four in there.

Let’s not. Dive safely, guys.

They do.

Phyllis really liked the deep-sea Outer Banks exhibit and I wondered how often she’d seen a view quite like that from the inside.

And a good time was had by all.

If I do this row it’ll be done (meaning the row). If I do this next row I’ll never have to do it again. If I do this one more row it’ll be done.

And so on.  The baby blanket is coming along.

Meantime, I’ve been playing with a recipe. It’s the brief time of year when our Costco sells big bags of frozen tart cherries.

Chocolate Cherry Lava Cakes for two:

Mix a spoonful or two of sugar and a half spoonful of corn starch (optional) and stir into about a cup of frozen tart cherries; cover and zap for several minutes, long enough for the corn starch to have had its needed one minute of boiling time. Let cool a bit, then blenderize or cuisinartify to make sauce. Set aside.

Melt 2 tbl of either butter or coconut oil with 1/2 c of bittersweet chocolate by zapping about 35 seconds. (The original recipe calls for it to be chocolate chips.)

Whip two eggs with a pinch of salt; add the chocolate mixture in slowly as you beat it with a wire whisk so that the heat of the chocolate doesn’t cook the eggs. Add 2 tsp flour and whip a bit more, then pour into two greased 8 oz ramekins. Or two cupcakes’ worth or hot cocoa mugs or whatever works for you.

375 for 12-13 minutes (note that my oven is slow).

Serve lava cakes with cherry sauce.

I’ll add pictures later. I’ve been too caught up in finishing up the knitting for now.

More apple and peach photos… And I saw the hawk! After the downpour was over, swooping by almost unseen for his speed, then in full view, then five more almost-missed-that swoops, again and again. Protecting his nest?

A friend who’s an avid birder dropped by, and we pulled up chairs side-by-side and watched the show at the feeder as we chatted. She mentioned that her hawk never shows her anything gory, just feathers gently wafting in the breeze.  Ours too. “Oh, there’s your wren,” she added. But she just missed meeting Coopernicus.

And. After writing last night’s post about appreciating those who make it so our food comes to us and not wasting their work, I went in the kitchen, where I had a bunch of bananas that were right at that perfect point–and where they would be just past it in the morning and I knew it. Time to practice a little more of what I’d just preached.

I squeezed a Meyer lemon, threw the bananas in the Cuisinart, decided it needed a second lemon and certainly didn’t need any sugar and I whirred the thing for several minutes.

It came out with a texture like angel food cake batter. Curious. Warm, though, of course, after applying all that friction to it, so I put it in the freezer, remembering that my mom would do that and then take it out and whip it again briefly in the frozen state to break down any large ice crystals and call it done.

And then of course I entirely forgot my new sorbet all day so we still have something to look forward to.

I made up a zucchini bread recipe twenty-five years ago after buying and freezing and using for the longest time a twenty pound bag of pecan meal from Sunnyland Farms, and then another. It’s been a long time since I made this, though; I have no idea now where I had it written down.

But how could I resist those big blue Bambi eyes? And so tonight I tried to replicate what her memories were making perfect. And this will definitely do–so I’m putting it where I know I won’t lose it again. Here.

The ground pecans substitute for some of the flour and half the oil of this fairly standard recipe.

____________________

Pecan Zucchini Bread a Michelle–two loaves

Measure a mildly heaping cup of toasted (350, 10 min–or don’t worry about the toasting if you don’t want to) pecans and cuisinart them till they start to be pecan butter–I’m liking smoother over grittier since I’m the one doing it. It came to just under 3/4 cup packed.

Mix in a half cup melted butter. (Oh but I wish. Earth Balance worked fine.) Whip in two cups gently-packed, grated zucchini, and three eggs. (Oh. I was supposed to add in a tbl of vanilla?  Oops, I guess.)

In a separate bowl, mix: 2 1/2 cups of flour with 1 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1 1/4 cups sugar (this is a cup less than what they said but plenty sweet for us), 1 tsp salt, and 1 tablespoon cinnamon.

Whip in the liquid mixture. Bake at 325 for about 55 minutes or till a toothpick in the center comes out clean.

Try not to eat it all before morning. That first loaf is going down fast.

(Edited to add in the morning: I might take 1/4 cup flour out for next time, but it’s good as is and makes great toast, somewhat biscotti-esque, to spread with cream cheese.)

Milk Pail‘s fresh almond paste has a higher almond and lower sugar content than the stuff in tubes elsewhere; amount will be random, but aim for the .5 to .7 lb range slab. Cut it up a bit and Cuisinart it with 2/3, or, if you like it sweeter, 3/4 c sugar, 3 eggs, 1 tsp almond extract, long and hard, then add in 1/4 c flour (of the type of your choice, I imagine, though with Sam gone home I just used plain old plain old) mixed with a tsp of baking powder. 8″ springform pan 35 min at 350. A near-instant recipe.

Michelle wheedled and threw Bambi eyes at me when I got home from Purlescence tonight and then pounced the moment it was cool enough to unlock the pan. No added fats, unlike the original Fanny Farmer version. Eggs and almonds and no allergic reactions, hey, guys, save some for breakfast.

And while I was at knit night…

Nathania got everybody’s attention: Pamela had had an idea and they’d thought it was a great one. Since the shop had moved into its bigger space (in the same shopping center), they’d had this big white bare wall. Purlescence has always tried to offer a sense of community to all who love to work with yarn as they do; Pamela’s idea was that we could all pitch in and create a community wall of–knitting, weaving, crocheting, tatting, you name it. Square, round, funky, big, little, Nathania asked, whatever appealed to you: like some of the get-well afghans out there (boy did I feel proud and happy and blessed by so many friends and lucky all over again as she said that) and then they would move the furniture out of the way of our knitting-group area and sit and piece together whatever comes in the door with this idea. Put a piece of yourself up on display with everybody else’s. Let’s make ourselves a giant wallhanging, a permanent display of who we are in our community.

My one request, she continued, is that it be purple. Your purple, or your purple (gesturing to one person, then another) or yours, or mine, whatever appeals to you and whatever you define as purple.

And it needs to be done by Stitches.

There are several celiacs in that knitting group. Maybe I could make some almond cakes with Bob’s Red Mill safely non-wheat flour to help celebrate when this big project is done. Pass the purple blackberry/raspberry sauce and dig in!

Michelle took John to the airport this morning, and with a touch of bittersweet we are three again.

But I’m still playing in the kitchen. I just finished this a few minutes ago.

I had a 20 oz bag of roasted, peeled chestnuts from Costco and a recipe (oh. wait. that’s not the link. here, try this) calling for 12 oz. So I upped the sugar by a third, figuring a bit less proportionately is good–and it certainly came out sweet enough.

So here’s what I did. I boiled three cups of water, a cup and a half of sugar, and all 20 oz of chestnuts for 35 minutes, figuring I might as well go for the longest time since I had more of the ingredients, turning the heat down a bit after the start but still boiling.  Cooled it some, added a tsp of vanilla, then dumped it all straight in the Cuisinart and whirled a long time. It was almost too thick for it, and I let the machine rest several times to keep it from overheating.

Somehow the taste was as if there were a bit of dates in there. Curious. It was pretty good, but then I spread some of it across some very thin, crisp ginger cookies Trader Joe’s sells, a combination that would have ended our supply of those pretty quickly–it was *very* good. Totally sells the chestnuts. Richard’s face lit up, too.

But what suddenly stopped me from eating a third was my tongue suddenly feeling like it was burning in spots. More so than that I-am-just-imagining-this of yesterday with the cream puffs. I Googled for nut allergy reactions. I so was not expecting this.

I’m still not sure, and if I am reacting then it’s certainly not on the level that that allergy site was talking about, but neither am I going to mess with this before calling my doctor. I had a reaction to dried rambutan (also from TJ’s) that had my mouth suddenly on fire and my throat closing nearly shut a few years ago while I gasped for breath–scary stuff.  A cousin of lychees, and I like lychees, but I’ll never touch them again.

I am quietly putting that spread away in the fridge as soon as I finish typing this. Hmm.

The phone rang about five minutes ago. At this hour? I wondered. (Actually, not, I need to fix that time stamp that didn’t change with the daylight savings change last month.)

“This is your daughter,” pronounced She Who Can Hear Across The House (but is toiling away on a tight work deadline), “do you want to take the cookies out of the oven? They’ve been beeping for awhile.”

I had made them to help lighten her load a bit for the evening. They’re a little more golden around the edges than they might have been. Perfect.

———–

Almond Meringue cookies

Mix 1 1/2 c almond meal (thank you Trader Joe’s) with 1 1/2 c powdered sugar, set aside. Whip three egg whites till they hold a stiff peak, fold in the almond/sugar mixture. Tablespoonfuls onto parchment paper on top of a baking sheet, bake at 350 for–well, it was supposed to be 15-18 minutes. And yes you can just use a heavily-greased cookie sheet, but with these, parchment paper really is the way to go.

If you want, dip these in melted bittersweet chocolate and then refrigerate.

———–

The funny thing about these is that my daughter once asked my friend Miriam for her almond cookie recipe and Miriam, bemused, answered, They’re your mom’s recipe.

Oh.

Good and fast and healthy (not to mention addictive.) Enjoy!

Left the house at 2:00 to take a friend to the airport: his grandmother had just died of Alzheimer’s and he was taking one day off from the intense world of medical training to fly out for the funeral.

When someone needs a ride for that, you take them.

But I asked him beforehand if we could leave just a few minutes earlier? Maybe ten? I had a doctor’s appointment to go to.

Sure, no problem!

As we went down the road, he talked about the strangeness of grief mixed with relief and the loss that had happened years before–and loss again, but with a…but…. Now at last she’s with his Grandpa again.

And then. I only got a brief glance because I was the one at the wheel–but at the place where I have seen one before, a peregrine falcon suddenly burst past the trees next to the road and zoomed across in front of us, both of us going, WOW!, low enough down that for a split second I worried maybe a semi might… But it was safe. In the blink, I would have guessed it a female for the shape of the body and likely an adult or near-adult. So close! Wow!

And I wondered silently, Ty, you have no idea, but a raptor always shows up when I need one, especially peregrines and my Cooper’s hawk. Maybe you needed one too.

There was some slowdown going on in San Jose but I got out of the backup and away to the gate about the time expected–but coming back around onto the freeway, traffic where I had just been was one solid mass of cars clear back to the next city. Had we left five minutes later, I would have been utterly hosed.

I was exactly on time for my doctor. We had a fair bit to discuss, and she’s a good one: she takes the time.

I raced home (it was 5:00 by now) and started peeling apples. Richard called; I dropped everything and went to get him since I had his car. Coming out of the neighborhood, a large red-tailed hawk soared right above. I have never seen one here before!

More backup. They’ve been digging up the road where pipeline 132, the infamous San Bruno Fire pipeline, goes down the neighborhood. Came home. Chopped apples. An old quick New Hampshire autumn dinner is that you cook sausage crumbles with diced preferably Granny Smith apples (getting out absolutely as much grease as you can) and then when it’s all done, pour just a little maple syrup on it in the serving dish, grade B for the more intense flavor if you can find it. Trader Joe’s here has it.

Thirty-seven minutes after we walked in the door together, the table was cleared and set, three different dishes were cooked from scratch, and our dinner guests arrived. We did it.

I could never have pulled half of that off in the bad old days. Wow life. Look at me now!

Five large juicy-ripe, perfect nectarines, cuisinarted, a pair of pints of raspberries left whole, the juice of half a Meyer lemon from my tree, a cup and a half of sugar, boiled and stirred five or six minutes.

Michelle was in and out all day with an old high-school buddy of hers and I had this fresh fruit needing to be put to good use. It came out sweet enough and it set enough to call it jam; next time I would use half the sugar and half the cooking time to make a sauce to keep in the freezer, to be doled out carefully.

The first jar of jam went to her friend.

Who went along with Richard and Michelle to Costco to buy us more nectarines and raspberries for the next batch. I want to do more of that combination!

Lemon juice with pears sounded kinda boring, and I wasn’t inspired by it enough to brave the thorns on the lemon tree in the dark. My mom once created a pear-lime pie that won a recipe contest, but there were no limes around. (Gotta get me a tree for that…)

But the idea of sour to balance the intense sweetness of the ripe Bartletts that needed to be used up got me thinking. Yes we did still have cranberries in the freezer. I was curious. And so:

——————

Pear Cranberry Pecan Crisp

2 c quick-cooking oats

~2/3 c brown sugar or to taste

most of a stick of (butter would be better, but for the dairy allergy in the household, I used) Earth Balance, melted

Shakes of cinnamon to taste

about 1/2 c pecan pieces

4 large ripe Bartlett pears, sliced up

About a half cup cranberries. Note that mine were still frozen. I think next time I would mix the cranberries and brown sugar separately before throwing it all together.

Bake in a buttered or cooking-sprayed 13×9 pan at 350 for about 35 min, maybe 40, depending on oven and pan: I waited till the cranberries were split open and cooked to early-mushy-looking; the edges of the pan should be good and bubbling.

——————–

I thought I was making breakfast last night when I did this but there was only a very little left by the time we three went to bed. It is safe to say we were very pleased with how it came out.

And on the wildlife front? I set out some suet crumbles this afternoon for the juncos and towhees that don’t care for the safflower in the feeders. A birdy-looking version of crisp, I found myself musing.

A jay showed up to steal the last big clump.

I ignored it. It had probably already gotten the rest of it when I wasn’t looking anyway. Go ahead, stare at me, I know the hawk has recently gotten a taste for jay meat–you’re letting down your guard, you know, you’ve got your face to the window.

Hey! You’re no fun! You’re supposed to shoo me away! It stared, just in front of the food but not touching it, waiting the signal.

All it got was a smile out of me. No, really, I wasn’t trying to feed it to the hawk, I was just curious how long it would take for it to give up and just grab it and go.

Now, one birding site I recently read claimed that scrub jays have a bigger brain ratio and are smarter than squirrels: they not only hide food for the winter, they remember forever where every single morsel went (which is why the squirrels watch the jays. A little thievery between friends.) And so, like the squirrels, you can never set out enough to make the jays be satisfied, despite the fact that in our climate there’s abundant food year-round. Hoarding is in their biology.

I knew it wasn’t hungry. Eh, what’s a little suet between friends. Go ahead. I went back to what I was doing.

It kept waiting for me like a little puppy pleading with me to play the game. Oh, finally, okay, and I waved my arms to give it the good scarecrow try. And at that, it at last scooped up that beckoning beakful, just to let me know it was still the one in charge around here, and flew off satisfied at last.

Glad to oblige.

Here’s my version of chocolate hazelnut torte, and I would show you a picture if only my blog and camera were playing nicely together today. If you loved fingerpainting as a kid, this is for you.

9″ springform pan (thank you Don and Cliff!), the bottom covered with parchment paper and then the bottom buttered or with a no-stick baking spray on it. Oven at 325.

Ingredients:

10 oz really good bittersweet chocolate. This is 22 squares from a Trader Joe’s Pound Plus bar.

6 eggs, separated

1/2 lb toasted hazelnuts*

1/4 lb toasted hazelnuts*

1/2 c sugar

2 tbl sugar

1 c powdered sugar (Whole Foods carries one without cornstarch for the corn-allergic)

1/4 c. cocoa; I use Bergenfield’s Colonial Rosewood by mail from New Jersey

1/2 tsp salt

2/3 c butter or coconut oil.**

2 tsp bourbon vanilla

In Cuisinart, pulse 1/2 lb toasted hazelnuts. Once it’s at the nut meal stage, add cocoa and salt to fine sand but not nut butter. Set mixture aside.

Hazelnut paste: in the now-empty Cuisinart, pulse 1/4 lb toasted hazelnuts till fine; add egg yolks and confectioner’s sugar and whirr a bit more. Do NOT add the yolks before the hazelnuts are ground alone–it is very hard on the motor and you might be buying a new machine, but after they’re ground, it’s a lot easier and a lot shorter, you’re just mixing.

Melt the chocolate: in my 1300 watt microwave, I do full power for 30 seconds, stir, 20 seconds, stir, then 10-second increments, carefully. Chocolate burns very easily so it’s better to let it melt as you stir then to try to get it to melt more first. Set aside.

Beat egg whites, gradually adding in 2 tbl sugar; set aside.

Beat butter, 1 c sugar, and vanilla till light and fluffy. Add in the hazelnut paste (it will be sticky), then the melted chocolate. Add in the first hazelnut mixture. Then, and this is the fingerpaint-fun part, mix those beaten egg whites into that heavy mixture, and really, the only way to do that after the first bit of trying with the wooden spoon that feels like someone tried to Jimmy Hoffa it with a cement block hidden in there is to just go squish it through your fingers as gently as you can till it’s as mixed as much as seems reasonable.

In my dark nonstick pans, it’s 325 for 45-50 minutes. Let cool, refrigerate overnight before cutting into it. Original recipe I worked from said bake 50-55 min but I found that too much in my pans.

If you want a sweeter cake, the original recipe had 1/4 c more sugar than I use.

I actually prefer this without ganache: it stands on its own, but if you want that extra, go to the glaze recipe here.

*To toast hazelnuts, bake at 350 for 14-15 min. Rub the skins off as much as you can after baking: they give a bitterness, but they also help keep the nuts from going rancid before you buy them.

**Note that coconut oil gives a good texture to the finished cake, but if you use hazelnut oil it will be all in crumbles. If you use coconut oil, you will taste it, and whether that’s good or bad is up to you.

(Updated 10/26/13: a little less sugar, a little less fat. Was 1 c and 3/4 c, respectively.)

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.

A Costco-sized package did this to me. They looked so good and they were so cheap but there were so many!

And I can never follow a recipe, so here’s my version. I rinsed the blackberries and then rolled them gently from paper towel-covered plate to paper towel-covered plate, patting them on top too to dry them off as much as possible.

Oven ready at 350.

Melt a stick of butter and pour in a 13×9 pan and swish around. (I greased the sides with a little extra butter.) Cover the bottom with 18 oz blackberries, ie one Costco package’s worth, trying to spread them across as they hit rather than pushing them around a lot afterwards so that the butter stays distributed as evenly as possible.

Meantime, have 2 c sugar, 2 c flour, 1 tbl baking powder, 1 tsp salt mixed together; pour in 2 c milk and beat. (Okay, so I substituted about 1/4 c super-heavy manufacturing cream in there for that much of the milk.) Pour over the berries and get it quickly into the oven.

Bake one hour. Makes something between a popover and a pancake with its own fresh jam. Note that the measured volume of berries, at about 5 c, nearly equals that of all the other ingredients together.

But be careful: the original recipe said to melt the butter in the pan in the oven, take it out, then pour the milk mixture over and add the berries. That, my friends, is a good way to have exploding glass all over your kitchen unless you’re using a metal pan. Cold liquid should never come in contact with hot glass.

Oh, and the knitting? Got past my roadblock and knitted up most of an ounce of fingering weight today. Love love love how it’s coming out, with credit for the exquisitely soft, beautiful yarn going to Lisa Souza. The cobbler was to celebrate and to get my hands to take a break.