Licking Your Fingers

“If I had two dead rats, I’d give you one.”

This is one of my husband’s and my shared endearments from one of our favorite cartoonists, B. Kliban. It’s a sort of “for better AND for worse” all rolled up in one, but we mean whatever we have of ourselves, we give it to the other person to share.

My gift this weekend was just a little free time, an entire day without obligations or plans. I was naturally tempted by sloth, my favorite deadly sin. After all, there are a lot of recorded television series episodes on that box under the big screen. A tiny voice from under the big screen says, I’ll be here until you erase me, too.

Other temptations were calling that were more immediate, like the gorgeous weather of the not-quite-summer we’ve had this year. Not that I want to jinx anything, but that great big low pressure swirl off the coast of Washington and Oregon has been a delight for me and brought the mildest of summers with sunshine, cool breezes and temperatures somewhere between perfection and boy-does-that-feel-good. At the risk of violating the no-gloating rule (who on earth makes these rules?) we really have had two good summers in a row with no air-conditioning needed. We still have the rest of August and all of September to go through, which are usually our hottest times here. So I may break a sweat yet.

Victorian Trade Card Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord

With the ideal weather, the answer for the day’s adventure was most certainly, “Out.” I had talked with my friend Maureen Friday who was down from Sebastopol visiting her mother Gerry, our agile window climber buddy. I wanted to deliver a wedding present for Maureen’s daughter that was too bulky to drag to the wedding in the redwoods, a pair of Belleek cups and saucers. Gerry and her two daughters Maureen and Nancy were enjoying a dinner of scrumptious pasta from Napoli’s, a favorite haunt of ours. I didn’t want to stay long but we did get started telling stories about gym classes, teachers and students. As I left, Maureen mentioned the Gravenstein Apple Fair in Sebastopol as a possibility for the weekend.

That little conversation resurfaced when the hubs and I were discussing the lack of plans for an entire day of perfect weather, so I suggested that we go.

I love the drive from my house up to Sebastopol. We drive across the marshlands of the Napa delta where there seem to be a huge number of baby snowy egrets this year. They line the ditches and shallows of the delta looking for yummy crawlies wriggling in the mud. They are an elegant bird, their white feathers so purely white, their long black legs carefully stepping to the next spot, their long necks and dagger beaks made for the instant dispatch of the unsuspecting critter. Like gymnasts, they make it look easy. We took back roads to enjoy the countryside, the cows, the deer, the late summer blooms, the dust of dry paths, the breeze through the eucalyptus, redwood and oak.

The Apple Fair is a popular little festival set in a shady oak grove north of Sebastopol. It has a deliciously old-fashioned picnic quality about it, with a hay-bale maze, crates and crates of apples, booths with handmade treasures for sale, fair-food and fairly-good-for-you food. We indulged in a large cup of unfiltered apple juice, an alchemical mixture that is uplifting and grounding at the same time. There were three stages with musical performers but it still wasn’t miserably loud and the music was fun. The Caged Bird Society booth was popular with all the little kids including the little kids my age eager to talk to the birdies, a mackaw, conures, love birds, parrots, all in their party colors.

Just as fascinating were the Bee Society displays including a bee colony under glass and all kinds of honey. Her Highness the Queen Bee did not make an appearance while we were there, but our docents had fascinating bee facts. We found out just a little more information about our “Golden Snitch,” a marvel of nature John and I had both seen while in Costa Mesa in Southern California. That bee was an enormous, gravity-defying all-golden bee which we had first mistaken for a hummingbird due to its size. Our beekeeper friend gave us the name of the professor most likely to be able to identify our “Questing Bee,” another lead to follow up on for another adventure.

When I was certain that I had inspected every booth for its possibilities, I snagged two exquisite lampwork glass fish beads for a very reasonable price and a cute little business card stand from one of the pottery booths. Total damage, not bad at all. John struck up a rugby conversation with a jeweler whose work was interesting but outside my interest to buy. We considered all the possibilities of junk food at the fair, then decided to drive home through Sonoma to stop at my favorite Sonoma Market. Ah, heirloom tomatoes for my salsa, fig spread, brie, a couple of steaks, some little red potatoes and off to home cooking better than fair food. And we had somehow managed to avoid coming home with an apple pie!

Enjoying the view from the Napa River Bridge while stuck in a little bit of slow traffic at the end of our day, we mused on the advantages of our fair city.

“You know, in Vallejo you can buy heirloom tomatoes AND visit your local Hell’s Angels chapter house.”

“We have a Hell’s Angels?” I marveled, wide-eyed and always impressed with my husband’s knowledge of local lore. A slow grin and a sly look later and there we were driving past a large no-color building, a fortress closed to the public but plainly marked "Hell's Angels." And in the same block were the Sunday evening church-goers with their pot-luck dishes and high heels and suits and godly intent who waved to us as we smiled at them. Like so many mysteries, they were positioned side by side.

“Wasn’t this just a lovely day?” I said, musing about the 7 of Pentacles, the harvest of realized results.  Not a computer was stirring, not even a mouse. “I think I’ll make some salsa.”

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Marcia’s Salsa Recipe

2 really large, “dead ripe” heirloom tomatoes or 3 normal size tomatoes from your garden. Even a whole batch of Sweet 100’s will do if you have those. Regular grocery store tomatoes just won’t do. You can try it, but you won’t be happy. The regular store bought tomatoes make a kind of unappetizing frothy pale pink stuff that is nearly flavorless.

1 large red onion (cut in half, save the other half for the next batch of salsa)

1 fat clove of garlic. Don’t worry. If everyone eats it, you’ll all smell like that.

2-5 Serrano peppers (this is not a wimpy salsa).  Jalapeno peppers are OK, but if you have to substitute, I'd go with Thai Dragons instead.

1 Pasilla pepper (optional but it’s really good if you can find it; you can substitute a banana pepper or even a green bell pepper but having tried them all I really like the Pasilla)

1 lime

1 bunch of fresh cilantro (don’t make a mistake and get the Italian parsley which looks a lot like it)

Salt

Coarse-ground black pepper

I used to use one of those hand-cranked plastic affairs I bought at a county fair and realized that Mr. Edison’s idea about electricity was truly inspired. So now I use one of those small electric mini-choppers you can buy at the grocery store. You can do this by hand, but you want to do this in the summer time and I don’t see any reason at all to work up such a sweat when a buzz or two of the mini-chopper will do the trick.

First, the order of ingredients is really important. Most importantly, do not try to chop the onions with one of the tomatoes. It just doesn’t turn out right. Remember, part of reaping results is learning from others’ mistakes. I’m just sayin’.

First, cut the half red onion into chunks that will fit into the chopper. Coarsely chop the Serrano peppers and toss them into the chopper (yes to seeds, no to stems). Smash the garlic clove with the side of your knife, remove the dry skin and slice it into chunks. Toss that into the chopper. IMPORTANT: At no point in this process should you rub your eyes with your hands. Others’ mistakes, etc. Zing that baby up until you can see the little bitty bits of onion, pepper and probably not the garlic. Dump the lot into bowl as the foundation for your salsa.

Next, slice the tomato into to crescent chunks and put them into the chopper. You will have more tomato than will fit into one round of the chopper. That’s ok. Continue to breath normally. Slice the lime in half and squeeze both halves of the lime juice, ever little bit of it, into the chopper with the tomato. Zing until it is a red and soupy loveliness; pour into the bowl over the onions and peppers. Chunk a second round of tomato into the chopper but this time add a teaspoon (oh, who am I kidding? I NEVER measure it; just put in as much as looks right to you) of salt and a generous-as-you-dare portion of black pepper. Zing until soupy and add to the bowl. Add a third round of tomato to the chopper and this time include the fresh cilantro, rinsed off and chopped into coarse chunks (I can tell you’re sensing a theme with this). Zing until soupy with green flecks, nice. Pour into the bowl. Last, if you have any tomato left over, and if you have decent tomatoes you will, pop those in the chopper along with the Pasilla pepper also coarsely chopped, again, yes to seeds, no to stem. Zing away and pour into the bowl. Stir the divinely inspired lava and serve with crispy salted corn chips and perhaps your local fire department standing by.

Also good on chicken, tacos, enchiladas, seared skirt steak, shrimp on the barbie and usually down the front of my t-shirt. Puts color in your cheeks. For medicinal purposes only. And it’s ok to lick your fingers but seriously, don’t rub your eyes.

Best wishes!

Harvesting the Fruit of Charity

Most of my own gardening has been theoretical rather than practical these last couple of years. In theory, I have a tomato patch each year. Practically, however, this year has not been good weather for tomatoes, so we never put them in. In theory, I love roses; practically, I have a lot of rosebushes that thrive, thank goodness, on my neglect. I’ll step outside every once in a while and deadhead them to get another big show. Our weather is ideal for roses, even this year. I don’t even want to think of the grass. This year’s version of “going green” is actually going brown in my yard. And yet, we’ve trimmed a little, planted a little, pulled a weed or two.

You might think gardening takes patience. That’s part of the message of the 7 of Pentacles, pictured as a gardener resting a moment considering his crop. Like real life, patience is only part of the answer. After all, I have patiently ignored my tomato garden all year and voila! Not one tomato on a vine!

So the 7 of Pentacles isn’t just a story of patience. It’s about paying attention. It’s about planting the seed and not just walking away. It’s about investing in the future, giving something of yourself, your time, your labor, your resources, for a vision of the future. It’s about all the hard work in between the idea of fresh tomatoes instead of hydroponic red mealy-sponges from the supermarket and actually eating one of those juicy dead-ripe garden love apples. OK, so I don’t like grocery store tomatoes for the most part, it’s true.

But to get anything better than that, I have to invest something, if only in favors to my friend Geraldine, who, in spite of our non-tomato weather this year, has once again a stunning crop of the happiest tomatoes. They are running about one month late though. If I build up my tomato points with Geraldine, I’m hoping I’ll get a small treasure or two from her garden. She’s good to us that way. I’m happy to trade my meager computer skills or a ransom in chocolate for a decent tomato.

Last Saturday, during that weekend where Americans are reminded of labor and reward themselves with a break from it, my sister-in-law, my husband and I drove to Sonoma. It’s a pretty town with a plaza, history, fun shopping and nice restaurants. We had driven past the vineyards and talked about the grape harvest logistics, oohed and ahhed about the grapes on the vine, vulnerable to the whims of weather. Will it be a good harvest this year?

We had also been talking about the ideal hamburger and I remembered as we were walking towards the Plaza that Murphy’s Irish Pub has a really good hamburger. We all felt better after lunch and headed to our original target, the Church Mouse thrift shop. The Church Mouse has three locations in Sonoma and is the most fun place to shop in town. Finding something wonderful in a thrift shop always makes me feel clever, too, in spite of the evidence to the contrary. This time I came away with a vintage Dooney & Bourke handbag at a bargain price, excellent shape, serial number intact. Score!

Of course, I only bought it. The really clever people are the people who donated it to help the poor and the people who work at the Church Mouse to make it a successful venture. I only did the harvesting, not all the work that my gardener puts in for the 7 of Pentacles. But I like the fact that I got something I really like, plus the money helps people.

It’s a habit I grew to love while I was growing up in my mother’s antique shop. I never could understand the people who insisted on new things all the time, as if the fact that they were the first to use them made them higher quality. I always preferred used things, except maybe shoes and underwear, because it was like having new friends. Part of it was the sense of the previous owner that I get from a used object. Part of it was that sense that somewhere in the universe, someone liked what I liked. Even if I didn’t ever meet them, we had something in common. The responsibility to tend the tender harvest transferred to me even if I didn’t plant the seed. And, truth be told, I don’t like the newer Dooney & Bourke purses, all that cloth and color instead of the AWL (all weather leather) and where is the duck? Gotta have a duck. My new purse has been places I’ve never been, seen things I’ve never seen. And the zipper and trim are still in good shape. I should be so lucky.

Through Mom’s shop, I gained a perspective that I don’t really own anything. This should come as a shock to my husband who is by now pretty well convinced we have at least one of everything, if not multiple copies. They’re just somewhere in the garage which has recently been dubbed “Warehouse 13.” In viewing the artifacts of people’s lives, I felt more like a caretaker than an owner. The fascinating item was in our custody for a while, like the gardener tending the plant but unable to own the life force that is its essence.

One of the things Mom tended in her shop was a letter written by Thomas Jefferson before he was President. It was fascinating. It was part 2 of a 3-part correspondence between Tom and a guy he had borrowed money from. Part 2 was the explanation of why he couldn’t pay the guy back just yet but with heartfelt promises to make good on the debt. It was certainly a glimpse of our President that had never occurred to me. He owed people money. And he was optimistic about the future. How American of him.

When you have something like that, can you really own it? Anything we did with it was likely to damage it including getting it out into the everyday pollution that is our air and reading it in our sunlight which is likely to ruin it. So Mom did the only reasonable thing. Instead of selling it, she donated it to the university where she lived at the time so that others would get a sense of Jefferson the man instead of Jefferson the icon. And in a way that gift of hers is a better monument than any tombstone or statue. It’s a gift of the past to the future, an act of supreme optimism on the part of a veteran pessimist. I think of it as returning to the hands of the public. I could visit the letter anytime I wanted and so can anyone else. The fact that she gave it away was so much more important than the letter itself, the act of charity so much cleverer than the artifact.

Although I have to admit it is a little comforting to think of good old Tom and his credit problems, so modern.

My big girlhood crush, James Stewart, told people in It’s a Wonderful Life, our real treasure isn’t in cash. It’s in the investment in each other and in the future. That guy believed in Jefferson, enough to lend him money. And we all got paid back.

Best wishes.