Ever Onward

A heavenly smile

If I think about it long enough, I'm sure I could reconstruct a long ago heard explanation of exactly how the earth, moon and sun must be positioned to create the various phases of the moon.  I suspect we saw it played out in the darkness of our high school's planetarium, or maybe acted it out using twirling students and a flashlight "sun" back in elementary school. 

I like that there's a why and a how and that it's all wonderfully logical, but when I looked up tonight, all I saw was a heavenly smile - a reminder that we are loved.

If you've never read Walt Whitman's poem "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" I recommend it.  It is short, reader friendly and a wonderful reminder that no matter how much we study and learn about the workings of the universe, the experiencing of it is where the magic lies. 

 

 

Good People

"There just aren't nice people in the world any more.  Everyone's out for themselves [sic]."  I heard these words at a meeting I was at recently and I had to bite my lip before a quick response came out.  If everyone is so awful, I wanted to say, I must be too.  So why are you talking to me?  Of course I realize that wasn't the speaker's intention, but generalizations about "people today" just set me off.

Once that ugly moment had passed, I felt sorry for the speaker.  Not because in my mind I'd told her off with elegant harshness.  No.  I felt sorry for her because I started to wonder what sort of life was she living, and who was she encountering, that she had such a dim view of people?

Last weekend I was a stranger, taking my morning walk in Cambridge, NY a town I'd never been to before, and a farmer tipped the brim of his cap to me as his truck rumbled by.  Later I walked into a busy restaurant, and a woman who was already waiting offered to share her table with me.  I believe people are as good (and otherwise) as they've ever been; it's just harder for people to act on those positive impulses when our communities aren't as close knit as they once were. 

I get excited when people accept that lifestyles have changed and find new ways to create community and look out for one another.  USA Today recently did a story that touched on this.  The story, Beauty Businesses Give Back gave a number of examples of people and companies doing the right thing, but my favorite was the "karma credits" at The Littlest Spa in Natick, MA.  OK, I'm a bit biased since Amy Elizabeth, the owner is a friend, but that doesn't change the fact that her program gives people a chance to help their neighbors.  Rather than offering coupons, The Littlest Spa issues credit toward future services when a patron brings in supplies for a local charity.  It's so simple and wonderfully effective.  I'm sure offering coupons would be less of a logistical challenge for Amy, but she makes karma credits work because it's important to her. 

So now the next time I hear someone say that people just don't care about each other any more, I think I'll have a better response than "You can't really mean that."

2012 - My Conservation Land Year

One of my very first posts on this blog explained that I had stopped making resolutions and had replaced them with a "wanna" list.  That little change in wording felt right, and it turns out that even without the force of a word like "resolution",  I did some of the things on the list.  I also lost interest in others and forgot about them.  And then there was one that started off strong and then went into hibernation.  It's time for that idea to wake up.  

By the end of 2012 I will complete my plan to walk all 26 conservation areas in town that have trails.  The timing is fortuitous because the Lexington Conservation Stewards have completed a major effort to update all the trail maps.  These maps have been tested by volunteers and I'm eager to give them a try.  The old maps gave a general idea of where you were, but the print was so small and blurry that even if you used a magnifying glass it was illegible.   I'm hoping that these new maps will also make it much clearer where the entrances are to the trails; I've walked through more people's yards than I'd like to admit in search of a trail head.

I know I work best with deadlines and To Do lists, so I've added a list of the Lexington Conservation Lands (with trails) in the side bar.  If you mouse over the list and a blog post title pops up, it's a place I've visited and written about.  Clicking on the name will bring you to that post.  I'm hoping that the list will be helpful for anyone who is local or visiting the area. 

When I realized that I'd originally made this resolution two years ago, I was a bit upset with myself.  So much for setting a goal and sticking to it, I thought.  And then I remembered a  quote my dad had at the bottom of his outgoing email for years; "Persistence prevails when all else fails".   

I may be slow, but I'm certainly persistent.

 

 

Apples in my Pocket

Apples have been on my mind.  First came John Seabrook's article "Crunch" in the New Yorker, which I heard read enticingly on NPR.  Seabrook's description of SweeTango, the latest apple breed to hit stores, had me wondering if the experience of biting into its crisp glory, might be worth stabbing myself in the leg with an EpiPen afterward.  Read his words aloud and see if your salivary glands don't leap into action.

 "[The store owner] handed the apple to [the customer]. She looked it over, and then sniffed the calyx, the apple's bottom. It was a large apple, but not supersized, like the Fujis down the aisle. It had sunburned shoulders, yellow sides, and a splash of green around the stem bowl, and it was freckled with 'lenticels,' through which it was imperceptibly breathing." 

Nothing yet?  Read this.

"Like Honeycrisp, SweeTango has much larger cells than other apples, and when you bite into it the cells shatter, rather than cleaving along the cell walls, as is the case with most popular apples. The bursting of the cells fills your mouth with juice. Chunks of SweeTango snap off in your mouth with a loud cracking sound. Although a crisp texture is the single most prized quality in an apple--even more desirable than taste, according to one study--crispness is more a matter of acoustics than of mouthfeel. Vibrations pass along the lower jaw and set the cochlea trembling."

That paragraph deserves an award, and I may too for resisting its siren song. 

Then came a flurry of apple recipes in the blogs and magazines that fill my reading life: Apple Butter,  Roasted Apples , Cardamom Roasted Apples, Apple Pie Cookies, Apple Sauce, Apple Butter, Apple Pie Jam and the most adorable (can a New Englander say "twee"?) Apple Chai Pies in CraftSanity (issues 4 and 5).  I resisted them all on the premise that while I can eat cooked apples safely, these cooked apples were just too desserty at a time of year that needs no more desserts.

We rang in the new year and my apple longings faded along with the discussion of holiday baking.  And then I heard Spilled Milk's Apple episode.  I was a goner.  When Matthew read off a list of apple varieties,  an image of a road trip based on tasting everything from the Aunt Rachel to the Tarbutton flashed into my mind.  Then there was the audio of the hosts, Matthew and Molly crunching into apple after appple.  Seabrook knew what he was talking about when he wrote that the crispness of an apple is all in th ears.

Several cook books and recipe websites later, I had a solution.  The apples were cooked, but still maintained a whisper of crunch.  The recipe wasn't a dessert, in fact it was pretty healthy (see notes in the recipe).  I put one in my pocket (bagged, of course) before heading out for a walk tonight, and a half hour later it was none the worse for having  shared space with my cell phone and keys.    Did I mention they're really yummy too?

Apple and Cinnamon Muffins

This recipe is a modified version of the one Rachel Allen provides in her excellent book Favorite Food at Home: Delicious Comfort Food from Ireland's Most Famous Chef.

Ingredients

2 eggs - lightly beaten

6 tbsp skim milk

6 tbsp (roughly a individual pack) vanilla yogurt

1/6 cup oil

1/3 cup apple sauce - this takes the place of most of the oil normally called for

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 unpeeled apple cut into matchstick size pieces

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 tbsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

dash of salt

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 cup wheat germ - high in fiber, iron, zinc and folic acid.  It adds a nice nutty taste too.

1 cup wheat flour

1/2 cup light brown sugar

3 hand fulls of your favorite raw (unsalted, unroasted) nut.  I used hazelnuts. 

Directions

1. Preheat to 350 degrees.  The recipe makes 12 muffins.  Use paper liners or grease your muffin pan.  These muffins retain their shape well, so the paper liners are optional.
2. In a large bowl lightly beat the eggs.  Add the wet ingredients: milk, yogurt, oil, vanilla, and apple.
3. In a second bowl mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon.  Then add the wheat flour, wheat germ, sugar and most of the nuts.  
4. Fold the dry ingredients into the wet ones.  The batter will become quite thick.  As soon as the ingredients are mixed stop, you don't want to overwork the dough.
5. Fill the muffin cups to the top.  The batter is thick enough that this step could even be done successfully by a young child.  Anyone who has ever had a child (or themselves) get frustrated as more cupcake batter ended up on the flat of the pan than in the cups, will love this.
6. Chop the remaining nuts and sprinkle them on top. 
7. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until the dough offers resistance (spring) when touched. 

 

Moonscapes

Shorter days do have one magnificent advantage.

When else is your daily walk likely to include a light show like this one?

Do you see the traveler?

    




Gute nacht.

*************************

For the astronomically minded, the moon pictured is a waning gibbous, 99% of full.  I'd never heard the term "gibbous" until a month ago when a second grader explained it to me.  Does knowing the definition make it any more beautiful?  Of course not, but I've always gotten a thrill from being able to name things, especially in the natural world.  I think it might run in the family.