Scientific Ink

Tag: Family

  • Michigan Tart Cherries make for great pie and “cherished” memories! (gratitude #34)

    I received a subscription to Bon Appetit Magazine, and the cover of the June issue was a spectacular classic sour cherry pie with lattice crust. I read the accompanying article, and I learned that Michigan produces about 75% of the tart or sour cherries in the U.S., and they’re hard to get outside of Michigan.

    I love summer pies, and blueberry pie has been my favorite. I love fresh black cherries, but I particularly dislike cherry flavoring in other things. I defy family tradition by detesting black cherry ice cream, for instance. But, I was intrigued, sour cherry pie might be worth trying, because a bit of tartness really helps make a tasty pie.

    So, I tore out the recipe and saved it. Today, I went to the Ann Arbor Farmer’s Market with my mom and my aunt (visiting from NYC). We picked up 2 quarts of sour cherries for the pie.

    The cherries brought back memories. My mom told the story of pitting cherries with a hairpin with her mom. I didn’t have a cherry pitter, so we stopped by a drugstore and got some bobby pins. And then, my mom, my aunt, and I sat on my back deck and pitted 2 quarts of cherries with 3 bobby pins. It worked great – the cherries were perfectly ripe.

    My mom reminded me that my dad’s old office had a sour cherry tree behind it, and then I remembered picking cherries from it by sitting on the fence.

    My mom then told the story of how on July 4th weekend the year I was born (that would be 12 days before my birth), her father came to town. My mom’s mom had passed away years before, and my grandfather attended to my mom by working beside her. They picked buckets of cherries, sugared them, and froze them, laying in some summer sweetness for the year to come. I suppose I come by my cherry snobbery honestly.

    Tonight’s pie was fantastic – the tartness of the cherries required a big dollop of vanilla ice cream as a balance. It’s as good as my favorite, blueberry pie.

    But even better than the pie was feeling connected to my mom and my aunt as we sat around a table and worked together and talked, and feeling connected to those that have passed on – my grandmother with her hairpin pitter, and my grandfather offering his labor to ease my mom’s.

  • Happy Anniversary, Janet & Nate! (gratitude #32)

    My in-laws are celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary.

    Happy Anniversary!

    True to form, they wanted to celebrate together with us: their daughter and their son and daughter-in-law. After a little bit of discussion, they decided on the location for the celebration – Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. It’s a fitting destination, the family camped here together often. Prior to this visit, their last visit was in 1994.

    We found a house to rent via HomeAway and now we’re here. We’ve been enjoying the seafood (oysters, crabs) and the scenic vistas here. We’ve had rainy weather (tropical storm Cristobal, perhaps?) so our pursuits thus far have been largely indoors: oat cakes, knitting, shopping for knitting supplies (Baadeck Yarns and Lorraine’s knitting shop in Neil’s Harbor), and fine dining (the home-cooked variety).

    But, on the occasion of their 40th Anniversary, I wanted to acknowledge the good times and warm welcome they have given me. My sister is moving near her in-laws, and was making a distinction in a conversation between “his” family and “hers.” She kept saying “they’re not my family.” I realized recently, I think when we drove down to visit Dave’s grandparents in Indianapolis, that after 14 years, his family is my family, not by birth, but by feeling and by association at this point, and I am sure it is Janet and Nate’s warmth and generosity that have made it so.

    I don’t want this blog post to be about me, but it is worth saying that, as a child of divorce and as a child in a family where 4 of 5 of my mom’s siblings got divorced, happy marriages kind of boggled me. I really didn’t get the rhythm of them or understand the give and take and the commitment involved. I knew what drove people apart, but not how they stayed together. Many people in Dave’s family, including both pairs of grandparents and especially Janet and Nate demonstrate such deep and abiding commitment to each other it just knocks me over. Last summer, when Dave and I stayed with Janet and Nate, I noticed how much Nate loved Janet. It was a simple thing, she and I had both gone out to run errands, and I had taken her car. I returned before she did, in her car, and after I pulled into the garage, I heard Nate calling to her from the garden. He sounded so happy she was back, it was sweet.

    That’s the kind of love these two demonstrate, on a daily basis, enjoying each other’s company and the company of their children. They’re not sickly sweet, Janet attributes her long marriage to “wine and alcohol” but I know there’s something much deeper that keeps them together.

    These two are a great example, one which I hope to emulate.

  • Needing bread in response to a death in the family

    Last week, in the middle of a workday, I got a call about a death in the family. I was shocked and sad – Somboun, the guy who died, was young, in his thirties, my husband’s age or so, and seemed in full health. He slipped away in his sleep, without warning.

    I was busy, out of the office and about 10 minutes from a client meeting, so after a few quick moments of talking to family, I had to put on my game face and focus on the client and the project. After the meeting, I had the ride back to the office to think and talk, more phone time, and then a little bit of decompressing with the other riders in the car. I talked about my relationship with him, about his relationship to the family, about meeting him and what he was like.

    When we got back to the office, to the hub-bub of lunchtime and visitors, I was ready to shut down completely. I think I’d finally had enough time for it to sink in. The funny thing is, I really, really wanted bread. I had a salad, dressing, and some lovely smoked trout Dave had brought back from up north, but I wanted salt and crust and chew. So, I went out and got a Zingerman’s sea salt bagel. I never eat the salt bagels, tho I love salt, they’re usually too salty for me.  

    Usually I bolt my food, unhealthy I know. It’s just before I notice, I’ve eaten it all up. This time, I sat alone, not wanting to be social, and chewed thoughtfully. Perhaps in response to the news of the death, I was really able to focus on the taste of the food, its texture, the crunchy and sharp arugula, the bite of the garlic in the dressing, and thick and chewy bagel.

    Nothing like the shock of mortality to make being alive so tactile.

  • My most amazing bridesmaid’s dress (gratitude #28)

    Everyone complains about bridesmaid’s dresses. I’ve bought some pastel tiered wedding-cake-esque “wonders” that immediately went into the “for Kiwanis” pile after the event. But I did get one dress, for my sister’s wedding, that has become my go-to dress for formal events and weddings since.

    bridesmaids and the brideMy sister is a pragmatic woman. When she got married, 11 years ago in May, she asked her bridesmaids to wear an off-the-rack dress. The Talbot’s dress she chose was a formal black dress, with a keyhole back and two discreet bows one on each side of the keyhole. The dress fit all the bridesmaids well, which was amazing considering that we ranged in size from 5’0″ to 6’2″ and in figure from hourglass to rangy. I think my mom did a bit of alteration to make the dress fall nicely on me, but overall it was a great deal.

    Well, my friend Vici got married last week, and, over a decade later, I was able to pull out that dress for another wedding. Thanks Chris!

  • Spring Bounty (gratitude #26)

    Today was a banner day. My sister and I stopped at a local farmstand for eggs, rhubarb, and asparagus. Tonight, we harvested wild leeks, though we were kind of wary since the leeks were in the spot folks have been sighting a juvenile black bear.

    Dave and Nathan enjoyed a day fishing and catching (instead of just the former) and got these two lovely fish – a rainbow trout and a coho salmon. On the way up this time, we picked up a smoker, and have been enjoying smoked foods – tonight we had smoked trout, grilled trout, grilled asparagus, and new potatoes pan fried with wild leeks.

    Oh yeah, and the neighbor brought over a huge cardboard box (5′ x 3′ x 2′ or so) and the kids drew all over it, cut a door in it, hung a flag on it, and played played played.

  • Gardening = soil + plants + labor = home + family (gratitude #18)

    I like plants. I was a plant ecology graduate student. I memorized their names, collected their seeds, learn how botanists classify their variety, and I grew and planted some in field experiments. I have worked as a volunteer to rid a nature preserve of invasive weeds (ongoing, neverending work), and I enjoy playing in my tiny city lot garden. I have friends with amazing gardens. I visit gardens on vacation with my family. I am a member of the Matthaei Botanical Gardens here in Ann Arbor. I like plants and soil and working outdoors.

    (Georgia vs. the rest of the world, originally uploaded by romanlily.)

    What a joy to discover a gardener hidden inside my almost-5-year-old nephew. It’s not entirely a surprise. He lived within a stone’s toss of the wonderful Atlanta Botanical Garden for his first years, and we strolled his infant and toddler self through the gardens there many times.

    Last weekend, I had a great visit to my sister’s in Atlanta. They’re in a nice house on a wooded lot north of Atlanta. They’ve been there a few years now, and it’s time to make the lot their own. The four of us went to the local landscape nursery to pick out a few plants. My nephew had a great time directing us through the covered yard of flats and pots of plants. Here’s what we got:

    • some herbs for cooking – parsley, thyme, cilantro, mint, and rosemary, to be potted on the back deck
    • 2 pair gardening gloves – a pair for my nephew, a pair for my sister
    • 2 cushy kneeling pads – one for my sister, one for my nephew
    • fertilizer for acid-loving plants – to feed the azaleas and holly in my sister’s existing landscaping
    • fertilizer for the new plantings that didn’t want acid
      • marigolds, coneflower, and …another that escapes me…”lellow” and orange flowered plants
      • hostas – shade plants with nice leaf variegation for a forlorn half-circle in the front yard under the trees
    • landscape cloth
    • potting soil

    We got everything home right before dinner, and my nephew was crushed that we’d have to wait a whole night until we planted in the morning. My sister looked at him, looked at me, and said she remembered what it was like to be a kid, how hard it was to wait, maybe he and I could plant a few while she fed my niece?

    So, we put the gloves on, got out some ceramic pots and the potting soil and we picked out a few herbs to put in the deck planter. The next morning, we got up early and planted the hostas in the front yard before 9AM so that we could water them fully before the watering ban started up. Digging into the red clay soil was really different for me! Wow. My nephew enjoyed seeing the worms we dug up, and loved helping move the dirt.

    I had to fly home before we could plant the last few marigolds, the coneflower, and the other one I’ve already forgotten. My sister phoned and said that my nephew demanded they plant the last few, and this evening he held the pots tenderly while he supervised his father preparing the ground for them.

    Planting memories, planting growth. Fun to see my nephew connect to the plants, to the yard, and to one of my favorite pastimes. How nice I was able to be useful and add to their environment in my visit there.