holiday

The Hallow


The leaves have largely left the trees yet there hasn't been much of a freeze. A few weeks ago I wouldn't have thought this to be, after that first bitter morning gave us the shiv. My projects continue, in fact some have come to flower, not a moment too early, like the sage, better late than not at all. Things have turned around through early mid November.



Broccoli laid out last April, still in bed, dreaming up florets. It's both in flower and production, an odd duck in brassica land.



Whereas summer planted broccoli is beginning to form heads that should never set flower.



October came with a few freeze warnings but has chosen a different path. Just once did a clear night after a warm day provide a frosting for the garden.



Eggplant is an impressive plant -it takes long to establish but is one of the last to go. Its tolerance of light frost is likely due to the insulation provided by its pubescent leaves.



Starbursts of fennel, they did not produce meaty bottoms or seed.

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Halloween is the Christmas of autumn (see that the box store has both decorations on display simultaneously). It was named Hallowmas long ago (Shakespeare: "like a beggar at Hallowmas"), and stems from Hallow evening (Hallow e'ening). All Hallow's Eve, the 31st of October (it used to be in May), the evening preface to All Saints Day on November the first. On November the second we have All Souls Day because you cannot mix the especially good with the rest of us. We speculate that the Church ordained these holy (hallow) rites on these autumnal dates to commingle with the rites of the pagans. Remembering the martyrs and saints and even the common dead must have had a very different tone in the warm growth of spring.

The emotions and attitude of growing darkness, chilling air, graying, stormier days, and the browning of plant life despite plentiful harvests could lead a mind to superstition and omen. Superstition leads us to an awareness of sin, that our darkening days in the face of so much good fortune must be accounted for, and that we account for it by accusing ourselves of the darkness that we confront at the cold edge of autumn. What else could have been offered, holy or pagan, to salve the confrontation with the portent of one's death from cold, disease, or starvation? Think of the dead -the saints and the rest as you enjoy today's plenty in the sweet of a soul cake.

"A soul! a soul! a soul-cake!
Please good Missis, a soul-cake!
An apple, a pear, a plum, or a cherry,
Any good thing to make us all merry.
One for Peter, two for Paul
Three for Him who made us all.

 Down into the cellar,
And see what you can find,
If the barrels are not empty,
We hope you will prove kind.
We hope you will prove kind,
With your apples and strong beer,
And we'll come no more a-souling
Till this time next year."

By Christmas, as the larder dwindled from plenty to rations at the grim precipice of the full course of winter, the attitude of holy or pagan rites change to the spirit of hope, to the growing light as the earth begins its tilt toward the equinox, but also the superstition of redemptive suffering through the depths of winter. Why do I suffer? Because you are a sinner. Be mindful of this, suffer, and you will find redemption. The experience of spring is so wholly positive, so ineffably discordant with the experience of winter that our psyche again seeks superstition in the redemption rites of spring.

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Several years ago a woman wearing a patterned skirt, equally of deep red and bright white, sat across from me on the subway. This color combination was visually captivating and I thought about why these two colors, put together, had such power. I considered things that come in red and white and two that came to my mind were Santa Claus and meat. Yes, fat marbled red meat. I thought about the promise of fatty red meat at the precipice of winter. I thought about venison at winter's solstice, its winter fat, but also of flying reindeer pulling Santa Claus in a red and white outfit. This fat, jolly piece of marbled meat or at the least sheathed in the colors of meat. What a gift to anyone trying to survive the winter, at its outset, when hope, hunting, the preservation of meat in freezing temperatures, and the ash-covered, fire-cooked meat (the irony that industrial era Santa comes down the chimney) are a bulwark against the longest season. Of course, I'm mixing histories and rites, but the psyche and the imagery so specific leads me to, at the least, wonder about such things.

Happy Halloween.






The Birds


I have to keep it short, today. We have been blessed with much and are thankful beyond the sentiment. As I worked diligently in the studio, the turkeys enjoyed the old garden (that finally received the garlic, yesterday).



Our dinner's bird came from here, the Gale Woods county park. Despite losses of millions of poultry birds to a severe outbreak of avian flu at Minnesota's mega farms, small farms like Gale Woods didn't lose any birds. It's hard to imagine how we could decentralize the production of food animals at the scale that we produce and consume them in this country, but I am thankful for this park and its mission, and that it provides for our meals of pork, beef, lamb, chicken and turkey, and finally for the Gale family who well understood years ago that this kind of farming was losing ground and needed to be preserved by imagining it as a park.

Happy Thanksgiving.




Risen


For those of you who celebrate Easter, happy and rejoice. Spend a few minutes in the garden today, or in a park. Life is up and so should we.

I'm not a religious person -in the sense of participating in organized religious activity, but it is not a reach to see the Christian liturgical cycles as mirroring the natural cycles. The hope in Christmas, sacrifice and work of lent, the Resurrection of Easter.

It's springtime and today you will feel it -it's going to be quite warm and probably humid. Showers or not, get out there. I will be delivering a basket of Easter eggs and chocolate to my 96 year old grandmother to brighten her day at the facility. She misses hard-boiled eggs. Then off to my aunt's, deeper on the Island, for an early Easter dinner.

Incidentally, an Italian woman who works at a local breakfast joint told us last Sunday, Palm Sunday, that back in Italy, and here back in the day, people made baskets out of those palms, not just crosses -and that was special. Every year they would try to outdo one another, creating new, crazier basket weaves. Was this how we came to deliver eggs in baskets on Easter?




Cheek By Jowl


On this snowy Saturday, as I had planned, I shopped different neighborhoods by subway and foot to buy the various foods I will bring to my mothers tomorrow, for our Christmas dinner with my family. In a couple of days, my wife and I head out for Minnesota, to be with her family and get a well-earned respite from all the busy-ness.

I have taken it upon myself to be a kind of ambassador from Brooklyn at family gatherings, despite the fact that everyone in my family has immigrant roots in the borough. I'm the kind of ambassador who brings food from my country, and this year it's several kinds dry sausage. I was hoping for the wild-boar cacciatorini at Stinky, but they were out. Disappointed, I bought a dry chorizo instead. Over at Caputo's I picked up a soppressata, and was intent on getting an herbed saucisson, but again -out. So I picked up a regular cacciatorini and a smoked scormozza, which is an aged mozzarella. I went to the other Caputo's, the bakery, to get some bread -essentially for my brother, who sees Brooklyn bread as gifts in and of themselves. He will receive ciabatta and seeded semolina.



I took the G train up to Greenpoint to stop in a little Polish bakery (Jaslowiczanka, 163 Nassau) that sells small babka. I bought four (ridiculous!), two blueberry and two with chocolate glaze. On the way, and because my sister heard Polish, I was admonished to find some kielbasa, smoked, which I could find in my neighborhood, but since I was traveling for babka...I stopped in this very busy place, generically called Meat Market (Podlasie, 121 Nassau), and was overwhelmed by smoked meats, and particularly bacon, which I have only my lack of knowledge of the Polish language to keep me from buying huge quantities! I selected two dry kielbasi by pointing, the cute Polish girl assisting with giggles as she asked the girl at the register how to say my number (for*teen) in English. Maybe on a less busy day I'll go back and risk looking foolish to find out what to call all those lovely looking smoked meats.

All this I will bring to my mom's place, via MTA railroad, in a snowstorm, along with gifts, this Sunday. Next post from the Big Woods of Minnesota.