Though I enjoyed having salads for lunch for a couple days, I was so glad to bake a loaf of bread that the Kitchen Ants did not get to devour. It was finished late last night and I cooled it in the mudroom inside the cake keeper. After slicing, I froze half of it just in case, and they didn’t try the keeper during the day but just to be safe I put it back in the mudroom tonight.
I was so grateful today for the cheese sandwich. Cheddar, provolone, pickled iceberg, bean sprouts… I was also so grateful for the voters of Wisconsin (and all the volunteers who got out the vote) who elected a sensible state Supreme Court justice who will fight to preserve human rights and prevent electoral corruption next year. Why was this such a pivotal election with potentially national consequences? Ask Robert Hubbell.
Meanwhile, back at Mirador, I was grateful to wake up alive. I’m also grateful for my smart little dog, who with just a week of training is now eagerly supporting my exercise regime.
I’ve been grateful the past couple of days for Thanksgiving leftovers, with which to enhance cheese sandwiches. Yesterday, I toasted oat bread, then layered mayo, Swiss cheese, lettuce, bacon, and leftover turkey, and grilled it in bacon fat. So crunchy! So delicious. Other people love fancy cranberry sauces with orange pieces, grapes, nuts, and all manner of other bits in; but I only love Aunt Linda’s cranberry sauce, the ancestral recipe from my father’s side of the family. “It’s like canned,” said the hostess the other day. Well, I guess, but it was being made long before anyone thought to put cranberry sauce in a can. I didn’t make it this year, and so declined leftover cranberry sauce. When I set out to make yesterday’s sandwich, I really really wanted cranberry sauce on it, the right kind. It occurred to me to substitute chokecherry jelly, which is sweet, tart, and a little bitter, just like cranberry sauce. Which, our ancestral way, made only of stewing whole cranberries and sugar, is really just cranberry jelly. I’m grateful there was still some left from two summers ago, since there were no chokecherries this year.
Another Thanksgiving leftover, a delicious puffy yeast roll, provided today’s sandwich, cold this time, with mayo, chokecherry jelly, turkey, cheddar, and lettuce. So simple, so delicious! I’m grateful that eating has become so much more to me than filling up with meaningless food. Eating is a gratitude practice in itself, holding in awareness the sources of all the ingredients, how they were grown or who made or provided them; remembering, with leftovers, their primary meals and who was involved in making and sharing those. I’m grateful to live in a community where hostesses remind me to bring containers to take home leftovers; and grateful that when I forget to, they are provided. As I remember Thursday’s dinner, I’m grateful all over for dining at last with friends again, and grateful there were leftovers.
Now that the days are warming up a bit the first garden greens are growing enough to start thinning them. Today I thinned broccoli raab, baby kale, and yukina savoy. Biko got a handful, and the rest I took inside for my own lunch.
I’ve definitely converted to mayo on the grilling sides instead of butter……it browns perfectly.So simple, so delicious!
Today, of the many things I’m grateful for, the perfect grilled cheese sandwich is right up there. Also grateful for more flowers blooming, more bees coming to them, and just the merest splash of a rain shower.
Grateful for this heirloom iris that opened this morning, given to me years ago by an old matriarch in the valley who had these irises in her garden for decades. I imagine this iris stock is around 75 years old.
St. Francis watches over the little aspen grove, with his head on I might point out.
I’m so grateful to have some clear paths through the yard this winter. It eases my mind letting Stellar out unsupervised, knowing he has some clear pathways to walk instead of struggling through snow, and it gives me wonderful access to most of the yard, which is getting to be important as spring approaches. I’m grateful to Wilson for cheerful snow removal as needed to provide us with safe walking.
Even down to the pond, where the west side is still covered in deep snow, and the east side is clear to the end with a chair in the sun.
The path opens before me. This has been the case since I moved here. In the woods, in the yard, as I move through this life, the path opens before me. More on this theme later.
I’m also grateful for leftovers. I got two more sandwiches out of the French Onion cheese mixture for the past two lunches, though I had to add a little spare provolone to both to stretch it. It brought to mind the collard greens melt, which inspires me to play around for awhile with some different versions of this basic sandwich. So simple, so delicious!
