The Virginia Trip

We had high hopes and full intentions on going to the 4th Annual Heritage Harvest event at Monticello but, alas, it was not to be. It would have been too much, as we cut a day off our normal leave-thursday-comeback-sunday trip. It would have been too much driving and we decided not to go. Next year, we hope.

In any case, we were busy! Matt built a ladder roost for the chicken coop, we helped Barbara harvest the, gosh, maybe 100 winter squash she had in the lower garden. We listened to the coyotes in the middle of the night and I swear they sounded like a pack of hyena from the Serengeti. It was creepy.

We also went to the Lexington Wine Festival and found 11 bottles of good stuff and came home with them. And, my god, the people watching! I had no idea that 80s preppie was so popular again! It was hilarious! All the guys in their seersucker shorts, polo shirts, and sweater vests. It was straight out of the comic my mom had once called 'Save an Alligator, Shoot a Preppie.' I still have it somewhere, I'll have to find it again. Anyway, the people watching was a riot.

The weather was beautiful, the food was wonderful. Probably won't get back down this fall....maybe in November if we're lucky.

Dad Update

OK. So. We went to see dad yesterday. They had transferred him to York hospital because they have the cath lab there and a stellar cardio group.

The good news is that 1) this thing that has been happening (for 3-4 years!!) isn't life-threatening, it is fairly common and treatable. Dad is coming home today. Mom is going to get him.

The bad news is that the procedure they had scheduled for yesterday (called an EPS, similar to a cardio cath) they had him all prepped and were into it about an hour before the doc decided he wasn't going to proceed because 1) dad's heart rate and breathing slowed down enough to be dangerous, and 2) the doc just didn't realize how large dad was until he saw him on the table. The combination of these two things made it too dangerous to proceed without an anesthesiologist there, so the doc called it off.

SO. Dad is being sent home with a 2-4 month monitor and instructions to loose weight.

I do not envy my mom.

That was an outcome that probably was obvious, but I wasn't expecting. I WAS expecting them to do this proceedure and find all kinds of blockages in his arteries and we would be told he needed a sixteen-tupple bypass surgery.

MIA Again

Hi, I'm back. Still hoping to get some new pictures/posts up, but something came up. Dad is in the hospital, nothing serious (or so we've been led to believe), but still.

The story is typical-male. Apparently for some time now his heart will start racing and (this is the typical male part) he'll pound himself in the chest and it'll stop. He hadn't told anyone about it, of course. So, last night it happened and he (in his words) didn't pound himself in the chest fast enough and got very lightheaded and they went to the hospital.

The doctors said there are two things it could be, so tests are in order today and we'll know something. I'm guessing pacemaker.

Anyway. I'm guessing he didn't pound himself in the chest fast enough because mom was there and he didn't want her to see it. Probably he was hoping it would just stop on its own and he wouldn't have to. And then she wouldn't know about it.

Holiday Tradition, in Chocolate

Three years ago, I watched Nigella Lawson make a Chocolate Cherry Trifle on Food Network. It looked incredible, and I don't really like cherries that much. I decided to make it. I'm not going to post the ingredients here, you can go to the link above and find them. I am going to talk about custard making, though.

I'd made several custard-style ice creams and after watching Nigella discovered that I was doing it wrong. You should never let a custard boil.

Below, I am mixing the *8* egg yolks, sugar, and cocoa:
I didn't know that you shouldn't ever let custard boil. Oops. It will separate and you will get scrambled egg yolk in with whatever you're making. While it won't kill you, it isn't pleasant either visually or texturally.

After you mix the yolks, sugar, and cocoa in a bowl, heat the milk and cream. I heated until it was steaming:
Whisk the warm milk into the yolk mixture. Pour a little in at first, whisking like a fool, and then whisk the rest in. At this point you also mix in the melted bittersweet chocolate:
Put everything back in the dutch oven and heat over medium, stirring constantly. Use a spoon - don't us a whisk, it will just keep it frothy on top and you won't be able to see the Evil Bubbles of Boiling.

Directions always tell you to cook the custard until it is thick enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon. I have never found this helpful, doesn't it always coat the back of a spoon, just more thinly at times? Here the spoon is coated, but the custard just isn't thick enough:

She is right in her directions, too: you want this to be thick. Runny won't do. I think this time I finally found the right method for telling 'doneness.' When it is thick enough that when you push it to one side of the pan AND IT TENDS TO STAY THERE, it is done:
The recipe calls for two chocolate pound cakes, too. I used box mix with 1/3 cup of cocoa mixed into the dry mix. I know, I know, but it is easier. Also, it turns out I only needed one, so the other is currently in the freezer:
The mostly-finished product! Notice the liquid at the bottom of the bowls? Homemade cherry liquor. All it needs is freshly whipped cream *unsweetened* on top:
Even if you don't make the whole trifle, the custard part of this recipe is to die for. Really. And if I don't make this for Christmas every year my husband will kill me in my sleep, so be warned. If you make this dessert, you may be destined to make it forever.

August VA Trip part 3: We Went Places

We've been down to visit Barbara a few times in the past year, so we'd done most of the big ticket items, like Natural Bridge and Monticello. I did a little research and found a few places up the road that sounded promising, so we headed up there.

First, we visited an old and still working flour mill. Wade's Mill is in Raphine, the same exit as White's Truck Stop. It is a beautiful old mill, typical of the type that dotted this part of the country very early on. This mill, however, is still in operation. They offer a LOT of great cooking equipment, from spatulas to fondue sets, and also a nice assortment of locally hand-woven baskets and handmade pottery. Of course, they also sell a lot of baking equipment, including but not limited to German willow coiled rising baskets for bread and other various bread baking toys.

They also have various types of flour (buckwheat, semolina, rye, etc), grits, mixes, cracked wheat and wheatberries, and syrups, butters and jams. I got a little of everything!
After that, we went to a yarn shop on the same road. I didn't get any pictures here. It is called the Orchardside Yarn Shop. It is (surprise!) on the same property as an orchard! Imagine that! You can go, buy yarn, pick berries, and have a grand time of it all. It is a small shop, but has a huge selection that seems to be heavy on the wools and wool blends, as well as variagated colors. Very busy when we were there. Very very nice proprietor.

After that, we went back to Lexington and drove around the VMI campus. It is a beautiful campus, the architecture is glorious. The picture below is of one of the many *houses* along the parade grounds that house some of the higher-ups in the administration. Admirals, vice-admirals, etc. All have nameplates outside.


I love the doors on the building below:

There were new students in formation on the parade grounds when we were there:


We had a wonderful time. Chickens and military schools and yarn and flour and good food and best of all....good company!

PawPaw

My veggie garden and this blog are named for my father's father, who I knew as PawPaw. His real name was Dennis, nicknamed Dink. Now, as some of you know my father's family has a habit of using the middle name of the boys instead of the first name so I think Dennis was a middle name. I'm actually not sure, though. Isn't that odd? Anyway, when he was teased in school they called him Dink Dink Cow Stink.

PawPaw grew up in Georgia in a poor family. He didn't go past 6th grade. They were farmers, and he was needed to work the farm. Keep in mind that this was in the 1910s.

He married my grandmother (Granny, Jenni) in the late 20s and they eventually had 5 kids. My dad was the third (Tim, you'll like this: he refers to himself when he signs off on his emails sometimes as '3rd of 5'). The eldest, uncle Harold, made it to 9th grade before they pulled him out of school to make money to help the family. 2 of 5 was my uncle Carl, who had polio and spent years of his childhood in the Shriner's Hospital. 4 of 5 was the only girl, aunt Pat. 5 of 5 was my uncle Sam, who is very tall and was in Vietnam. My dad was the first of the family to graduate from high school.

They moved around a lot, but primarily PawPaw was a buyer and seller of produce, and he also did some transportation. He was the first person to drive a diesel truck in Georgia. Dad remembers as a kid going to the Atlanta Farmer's Market ("the old one" he says) and walking up and down the rows as produce was auctioned off.

One of the coolest things that really makes me wish I'd been older and known my grandparents better is the stories dad has of PawPaw's green thumb and crop knowledge. Dad says PawPaw could walk into a field of tomatoes, pick one, cut it open and rub the to halves together and KNOW how good the crop would be. I think dad said he was testing for calcium, but god I wish I knew half of what he did about crops. It really makes me realize how much we have forgotten because of our love of numbers and science over the 'old' way of doing things.

Dad said once he went with PawPaw to South Carolina to look a field of tomatoes. They went to the field, no tomatoes to be found. The entire field was covered with Kudzu vines! He wandered out into the field and yup, the tomatoes were doing just fine under the Kudzu, and PawPaw bought the entire field of tomatoes while they were still green. He was apparently happy with the dirt and quality of the crop. He paid cash that day, well before they were ready to harvest. If something would have happened with the crop he would have been out that money, but back then people remembered things like that, and that farmer would have worked with him in the future on good terms. This was the 30s, after all, and they were in the middle of a depression.

PawPaw died in 1981 when I was 6. These pictures are from 1978, I was 3 or so. I have no idea what he's pointing out to me, but he kept farming in his yard in downtown Atlanta until he died. I love in the first picture how it shows the garden encompassing the area my grandmother used to hang clothes to dry. She must have loved that.

Dad also talks about visiting my grandmother's family in rural South Georgia and working on the tobacco farm. He spent time in Florida and worked unloading banana boats as a teenager. I think this is why we never had a garden when I was growing up, he was probably sick of it all.