Patience Prevails

August 2, 2026August 3, 2026 / wendyulfers / 11 Comments

During the hibernating years of COVID in the early 2020’s we discovered the opportunity to get away and off the grid was by purchasing some camping equipment. We reserved sites in primitive wilderness settings with granite boulder outcroppings amid aspen and ponderosa forests. The Rocky Mountains rise in the distance.

We depended on what we brought with us meaning food, water, and supplies. In the beginning we forgot many things considered essential to “sleeping rough” but began making lists and fine tuning our gear before packing for a night or two get-away. (High Winds is a story of early camping mishaps.)

Three years ago, we were gifted a large 6-person tent with a door you could walk through. This came via friends who were moving overseas and downsizing possessions left behind. For two tall people, we were hooked on the idea of walking in, standing, and sitting inside a tent instead of crawling in on all fours. Plus, lots of room for a small game table and personal gear.

Then my husband took a job with the Department of State just as COVID retreated. When he came home to work remotely, or visit, we did other activities with family and friends, but not wilderness camping. This summer he is back in Colorado full time.

When grandchildren, ages 7 and 6 came to stay with us for a week, sans parents, we decided to take them on an overnight camp-out for one night. After all, we had that big old tent lying in the garage and four sleeping bags. The children were excited, because as Sloan said, “I’ve NEVER in my whole life slept in a bean bag.” She was corrected several times before learning there is clearly a difference between bean bags and sleeping bags.

Tent Trials

The sister/brother duo were in day camp during the week at the local YMCA of the Rockies, three miles from our home. It was a great success. They learned many songs with gestures and dance moves that were repeatedly performed for us.

Mark and I decided that the camping trip would occur on the last day of the week after picking the kids up from the “Y”. As it turned out we were wise to move everything out to the site at noon to assemble things before retrieving them at 3:00PM. That big tent had only been set up by us one time, with the owner present, when we received it. There were no instructions. There were only bags of things. Many sizes of poles, mis-matched stakes, and a daunting rain fly that we finally mastered at the end.

The small plastic ground cover from our own 4-person tent was what we had to use as a base. The weather appeared to be clear enough, but the mountains often surprise. The first challenge was that with no instructions and no remembrance of how the dang thing went together; we had to engineer our way through figuring out which pieces went where to get it standing. It took 2 1/2 hours!

With more than a bit of frustration and some selective vocabulary, patience prevailed.

I left to pick up the children while Mark assembled pads, laid out sleeping bags, and organized the cooking equipment for supper. When we got back, he had discovered a hole on the side of the tent large enough for insects or rodent-like ground creatures to enter freely. He drove home for duct tape. (Now on our list of must haves.)

At first, the children were clearly out of their element. It was a strange wilderness environment. They wanted to sit at the picnic table and play “Go Fish” with the cards I brought. After one game, I suggested they follow a path up the hill through some boulders and go “explore things” so they could come back and tell me about it. They started out cautiously, but the possibility of adventure and discovery made them stronger together.

After a while, I couldn’t hear voices anymore and started calling, “Can you hear me? Please respond, so I know where you are.” They did. And eventually found their way back to the campsite by a different route. How perfect.

Dinner was hamburgers on the camp stove, and they were delicious. Then there were rocks to pick up and sort, and gopher holes to poke sticks into or fill up with rocks.

As dusk descended, we settled them into cozy sleeping bags and told them to talk themselves to sleep as we were just outside sitting by the picnic table. We would join them later.

There was much talking and giggling and peeking out the tent door to see what we were doing and if we were still there. By 9:30 it was dark. We entered the sleeping-bag-lined-tent-castle, and everyone settled down quickly.

The Storm

One hour later, I awoke to all four sides of the tent billowing in and out with fierce, roaring high winds. A squall line was moving through. I watched the wall where Sloan was sleeping drop completely down on top of her sleeping bag and then bounce back up. She awoke and sat up, as did Mark. We looked at each other thinking, “Should we go to the car?” Isaac remained unaware as only a child can amid gale force winds. He didn’t move the entire time.

Sloan and I switched places because the wall on her side was pulsating wildly. We held hands and waited. Then, after half an hour, almost as suddenly as it began, the wind slowed and stopped. We were both still awake when she said, “Can I move back to my sleeping bag because I like it better there?” She did. Storms end. The night passed uneventfully thereafter.

Patience prevailed for a second time that day.

In the morning, after breakfast and Cribbage games and playing with piles of discarded ice from the cooler, we began packing up and heard the dual refrain, “Can we do this again next year for TWO nights?”

Camping Updated

The next weekend brought 50% off Fourth of July sales at REI–the Mecca of USA camping and outdoor gear. An easy decision followed: out with the old, in with some new.

A stand-alone-six-person tent was purchased with pop-together poles, heavy-duty stakes, and a substantial rain fly alcove. It had visual instructions. The mummy sleeping bags from decades ago were switched out for something roomier for grownups who like to move, roll over, and change positions frequently during the night.

We were ready for a renewed camping life. Winter and summer droughts brought “Open Fire Bans” throughout the Rocky Mountains. Although used to that after two years of dry weather and forest fires, we wanted to get back in the woods, even forgoing morning and evening campfires.

I booked two days and nights in a new campsite for us that was remote and beautiful in the way we love. Trees, views, shade, and trails. The afternoon we set out began in light drizzle. When it diminished or stopped (briefly), we attempted to set up camp only to be driven back into the Jeep by a downpour. Several times we laid down the tarp, staked it, and then hurriedly folded it back up.

We played Cribbage on the car console in the front seats. Mark made me a Gin & Tonic in a tin cup. We watched drops roll down the windows and listened to rain beat on the car roof. And waited. Even deliberated about going home to try the next day.

But then the light began to look brighter in the west, so we sat and watched the sky. And waited some more. Eventually, a bit of sun poked through the clouds.

Camp set up easily with the new open sky tent and a rain fly we would surely need. Chili supper was consumed before sundown. A final Cribbage game with a glass of wine. As we tucked in, the rain began in earnest, off and on throughout the night. We were snug and dry.

I awoke to the sound of coffee percolating on the camp stove and sun shining through tall pines to the east. With tin cup in hand, I walked around some boulders and down a ravine, soon realizing there was nothing but acres of Larimer County Open Space behind our campsite. Sat on a sunny rock to finish my coffee under cloudless lapis skies.

boulders, ponderosas, mountains create the best site

At midnight the second night when I went outside, the full moon was bright, so I snapped a picture through pine boughs. When I woke again, the moon had shifted to the west and there were lovely leaf play silhouettes on the wall and ceiling above my head.

After breakfast, before packing up, we looked at each other over a final cup of coffee, grateful that patience triumphed over frustrating beginnings, turbulent storms, and incessant rain.

We know we can out wait many things to enjoy a perfectly fine getaway.

Photo gallery of how they grow

“Everything that was to happen had happened and everything that was to be seen had gone. It is now one of those moments when nothing remains but an opening in the sky and a story–and maybe something of a poem.“

–Norman MacLean, “USFS 1919”, from A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

Red Hot Coals in a Bean Hole

July 6, 2026July 20, 2026 / wendyulfers / 18 Comments

Several months ago, I submitted an essay to a Creative Writing Contest sponsored by the M.F.K. Fisher Foundation. Anyone who knows me, or who has glanced at my stories, knows that Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher (1908-1992) is my writing mentor who lived in the last century. She wrote 27 books over her lifetime on the topics of France, food, travel and memoir. Second to Fisher, I am also inspired by the works of authors Norman Maclean (A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, Young Men and Fire) and Amor Towles (A Gentleman in Moscow, Rules of Civility, and The Lincoln Highway). Both craft stories with wordsmanship I love.

This year’s contest writing theme was “Fire”. The requirements were that it had to be an original work and unpublished anywhere else. A maximum number of 250 words was allowed. There were 200 entries from 22 countries.

I don’t know where my story landed in the “no win” pile, but it freed me to re-write and self-publish this story about fire and Girl Scout campouts during adolescent years. It was my Texas girlfriend, Kathy, who suggested several years ago during a Colorado visit that I write something about campfires. The small group of women sitting in a semi-circle around our family-built-stone-ringed-firepit had all been in the same Girl Scout troop during middle school and early high school years. Kathy’s mother, Joyce, was one of our leaders and a woman I admired very much while growing up.

my San Jacinto Troop 473 sash with badges, achievements and awards

Kathy reminded us that on Girl Scout camping trips we cooked our meals in a bean hole.

The custom of “cooking in a bean hole” originated more than 100 years ago, in Maine, as a method of feeding hungry lumberjacks. In a hole dug in the ground, a fire was laid and a pot of beans was slow cooked in a cast iron Dutch oven all day–the beginning of modern-day crock pot cooking.

bean hole cooking invented to feed hungry men

As Scouts in Houston, Texas, we almost always camped out in hot weather. Sleeping bags were lumpy cotton, and we usually slept on top of them. The biggest wildlife terror was scorpions–inside the tent. At bedtime we lay in a row three or four girls wide. Flashlights scanned the tent walls, corners, and ceiling for any threatening presence before lights out. If a critter with a curled poisonous stinger was spied in our combined beams, shrieks of “Scorpio! Scorpio!” echoed throughout the campsite. Bodies hurdled over each other to get out fast.

scorpion with grasping pincers and curved segmented tail ending in a stinger

For five years, camping trips were one of my primary reasons for being a Girl Scout. First, we were away from home, with best friends, sleeping in tents, and sharing adventures. Secondly, we learned everything there was to know about campfires–laying, starting, tending and putting them out. But the best part of every campfire was sitting in a circle after dark telling ghost stories or singing songs in rounds or loud harmony. Favorites like “Barges”, “Spider’s Web”, “Kookaburra”, or “This Land is Your Land”.

wendy at camp, wendy and debbie in swamped canoe paddling to shore

Fire was central to the whole weekend camping experience, from morning to nightfall. Gathering kindling, stacking foraged sticks and dead wood from the surrounding area was an assigned chore, but seemed like a scavenger hunt.

Campfires were laid in a particular style, with the designated name descriptive of its shape. The Teepee was a three-dimensional triangle like an Indian teepee with kindling inside the base. The Log Cabin featured firewood stacked in a square pattern, crossing in opposite directions on every level until it was several layers tall, like a cabin wall.

Planning, preparing, and staging our “bean hole” supper began in the morning. First, a hole deeper and wider than a cast iron Dutch oven was dug near the breakfast campfire. The base of the hole was layered with red-hot burning coals and more firewood. The “cooking” team dumped canned beans, cut up carrots and onions, vegetable soup, hamburger and water into the black pot. The lid was fitted with a layer of aluminum foil to keep it secure, then placed in the hole, covered with more hot coals and buried under a layer of dirt to seal it in securely. There we left it, all day, while we headed off hiking, swimming, canoeing or some other nature adventure.

Somehow, packed lunches of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches sustained us until evening. By late afternoon, we returned to the campsite to uncover our buried, and hopefully cooked, supper. We dug off dirt and blackened coals and carefully lifted the still warm pot out of the ground by its handle.

Remarkably, or perhaps due to extreme hunger, the fragrant stew smelled and looked ready to eat. The raw carrots and onions thrown into the pot with everything else might have been a little crunchy. Yet the stew was warm and nourishing to young, famished stomachs. We spooned it gratefully into our mouths from metal Sierra Club cups.

A dessert of fruit cobbler could be made in the same manner. Cans of cherry or apple pie filling were scraped into a cast iron pot. Then covered with a layer of uncooked refrigerated dough, cracked open from a cardboard tube. This, too, was left buried all day.

We didn’t mind the bits of gritty dirt or charcoal that fell into the pot as we removed the heavy lid over stew or cobbler. It didn’t bother us when dessert was eaten with the biscuit dough topping either raw and gooey or blackened and crispy. It tasted delicious and fed our youthful hunger. We had successfully cooked dinner and dessert in a bean hole!

After cleanup, we sat cross-legged on the ground in a circle around the campfire roasting marshmallows for “S’mores”, laughing, and storytelling. The night ended with singing our hearts out as the fire dwindled to a bed of red-hot coals.

Whiskey with an “e”

March 13, 2026April 13, 2026 / wendyulfers / 3 Comments

In those days the best painkiller was ice; it wasn’t addictive and it was particularly effective if you poured some whiskey over it. –George Burns

Civilization begins with distillation. –William Faulkner

If you talk about whiskey with an “e” or whisky without an “e”, I usually align my sipping preferences with the scotch variety of single malt whisky, no “e”. My paternal ancestry was from Scotland, so my tastes are linked to that heritage. Scotch whisky is not typically sweet, and it doesn’t need to be mixed with anything else. A smidgen of water or a cube of ice, if desired. Neat if you prefer. It is a simple, straightforward beverage.

But there is another kind of distinctly American whiskey, with an “e”. And it has its own devoted following.

My friend, Craig, is of this category–a quintessential bourbon whiskey man. He has developed knowledge and interest in this classic American Spirit over decades. We have been friends since he married my best friend from high school exactly one week before my husband and I were married–many moons ago. I drink bourbon sporadically, in fact, only when Craig makes his signature Old Fashioned cocktail. But that happens infrequently because he lives halfway across the country.

In the fall of 2024, as the leaves were turning and the air cooling, we visited Gail and Craig at their weekend mountain home in North Carolina. I asked Craig to talk to me about bourbon–specifically what he likes about it and why. Little did I realize I was about to go down a veritable rabbit hole of whiskey education and information. It started with rounds of varietal bourbon tastings as well as learning the necessity for clear ice cubes as the invisible coolant for his preferred Old Fashioned. I now make clear ice, too, which is beautiful and invisible in my preferred whisky dram.

Craig’s experience with bourbon began in college with a friend who regularly made Old Fashioneds which they enjoyed together socially. His undergraduate degrees in microbiology and chemistry led to an MS degree and a PhD in Food Science. Studying the science of food created a natural interest in fermentation and distillation. When he moved to North Carolina where bourbon drinking is customary, his interest in whiskey culture took off. As his son grew into adulthood, this became a shared exploration and enjoyment.

Bourbon is most often associated with the southern state of Kentucky. It is an American barrel-aged whiskey distilled from a minimum of 51% corn with the rest of the grains (the mash bill) coming from wheat, rye, or barley in varying percentages. After distillation, it is always matured in a new container of charred oak. The barrels are 100% white American oak, charcoal burned on the inside to give the requisite smoky, toasted, caramel, and vanilla flavors from the wood. The average maturation for bourbon is eight years, but it can be more than this, or less. However, over-aging can negatively affect the resulting flavor.

There are no additives in making bourbon except for water to adjust proofing–the arbitrary standard of alcoholic strength of a beverage. Unique to Kentucky’s topography, the water is iron-free and filtered through native limestone. Currently, Kentucky produces 95% of the world’s supply of bourbon whiskey.

The exact history of bourbon is rife with legend. It has been distilled in the U.S. since the 1700s and probably began with Scottish and Scotch-Irish settlers who came to Kentucky as farmers. There is an oft repeated story that Elijah Craig, a Baptist minister, was the first whiskey distiller, but that is not factual. He was known to be the first to age bourbon in charred oak barrels during the 1780s. Today, Elijah Craig Kentucky Bourbon or Rye is one of the top-selling brands in the market, recognized for its quality, boldness and depth, and with many loyal fans.

How did bourbon come to be so named? It might have come about after the Revolutionary War when immigrants began pushing west of the Allegheny Mountains. The Alleghenies, part of the great Appalachian Mountain range on the east coast of the U.S., run in a southwesterly direction from Pennsylvania, through Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia. In 1785, one of the first counties established by land seeking settlers was named Bourbon, in honor of the French royal House of Bourbons (including King Louis XVI) who aided the colonists during their revolt against England. But the name bourbon, referring to the beverage, may not have been in wide use until the 1850s.

In the beginning, bourbon production was centered in rural areas of the south, on small farms and distilleries. As a deterrent to spoilage, excess farming grains were used to make whiskey. With the mighty Ohio River providing transportation, it was easy to move and sell in areas with poor road infrastructure. Whiskey was its own form of currency in frontier times. When bourbon making became commercial in the late 18^th century, both production and quality dramatically increased.

Then in 1919, Prohibition, the amendment to the Constitution prohibiting the manufacture, transport and sale of alcoholic beverages in the United States, devastated the bourbon industry for more than a decade. Illegal bootlegging was common but greatly compromised the quality.

After the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, bourbon culture didn’t pick up again in earnest until decades later. In the 1950s-60s, a cocktail renaissance was influenced by the New York City Madison Avenue advertising world. Classic cocktails, Manhattans and Old Fashioneds, using whiskey as the base, achieved new popularity.

In 1964, an Act of Congress, recognized bourbon as a distinctive product of the United States. Specific legal standards were set up for the industry. One of these was that to be able to label a bottle of whiskey as “bourbon” it must be produced within the 50 States, Washington, DC, or Puerto Rico.

By the 1980s other international cultures began paying closer attention to American whiskies, and today the bourbon brand enjoys global notoriety and a strong market following.

There were several turns in Craig’s career after university graduation. Initially, he worked for Frito Lay Corporation in Dallas, Texas. Then he moved his family to North Carolina. Two colleagues from Frito Lay followed. There they set up and ran their own snack food company, working every aspect of a start-up operation. When that partnership dissolved, Craig founded his own company and became a sought-after consultant across the food industry. He particularly loves new product development and has been designated Chief Innovation Officer for three major food enterprises.

Craig is extremely creative and loves to build things in his workshop. He has designed and made birdhouses, colorful chairs from old skis, tables, chairs and decorative art built from used, dismantled whiskey barrels, lamps with bourbon bottle bases, a large Jenga set with wooden brick-shaped pieces, and an outdoor shower for the mountain home. He plays the guitar and loves the music that was popular when he grew up. His sense of humor is contagious.

When Craig set up our first bourbon tasting session, no detail was left out. He had a set of Glencairn whiskey glasses in a wooden holder. The bottles lined up nearby. We had the added benefit of their infinity deck with a wood burning firepit and views of the Blue Ridge Mountains as backdrop. Perfect ambience.

Our most recent tasting was last summer. The range of bourbons went from mildest to spiciest–from wheat whiskey to malt whiskey to rye. We started with Woodford Reserve Kentucky Straight Wheat Whiskey. With a mash bill of 52% wheat, 20% malt barley, 20% corn and 8% rye, it was a clear light caramel color and had the smoothest taste overall. Woodford Reserve Kentucky Straight Malt Whiskey was next with 51% malt barley, 47% corn and 2% rye. It had some latent spice to it, and a medicinal astringent-like after taste. The rye was Bulleit Bourbon, 68% corn, 28% rye and 4% barley. I found it to be more earthy, less sweet, with a bit of rawness. Some added water softened it. Nice.

What I learned was that corn gives bourbon its sweetness, rye–the spiciness, wheat–the smoothness, barley–the nuttiness. The limestone filtered water of Kentucky impacts its own flavor along with different strains of yeast used in distillation.

In the late afternoons, Craig made his signature PBOF, which affectionately stands for Pawpaw Bair Old Fashioned. Pawpaw is what his grandchildren call him. Bair is his last name. On a regular basis, Craig uses Maker’s Mark*, a wheated bourbon. He likes its smoothness, without any harsh taste or spiciness, and its mid-price range. The distinctive difference between Craig’s PBOF and a classic Old Fashioned is there is no sugar, syrup or sweetener added. Just fruit. Plus, it is slightly diluted with a splash of soda water. Very sip-able and can be enjoyed in multiples with no after effect.

*Note: Maker’s Mark Bourbon Whisky is an exception to the spelling rule–no “e”.

adding fresh orange and bitters over ice

Craig’s Pawpaw Bair Old Fashioned (PBOF)

Lightly muddle (or squeeze) one orange slice (Cara Cara variety preferred when in season) with one pitted Bada Bing cherry (from Tillen Farms by Stonewall Kitchen). Add about one spoonful of cherry juice and two shakes of bitters (any flavor, but spiced cherry is nice). Add a tiny bit of soda water to liquify.
Pour this over a clear square or round ice cube in a cocktail glass. (Any drink is better over clear ice. See End Notes*)
Add two shots of Maker’s Mark Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whisky.
Add a very light pour of additional soda water and stir together.
Enjoy with family or friends on a deck or screened porch with an awesome Appalachian mountain view at sundown.

The light music of whiskey falling into glasses made an agreeable interlude. –James Joyce

late afternoon PBOFs for us and wine for Gail

Recently, I embarked on a “scientific” experiment to determine my own preferred bourbon beverage. Trial-and-error Old Fashioneds, crafted at home, were tested on two friends who don’t drink bourbon but were enthusiastic participants. Then, a nephew in Las Vegas acted as my taste-tester for a weekend. Lastly, our son in California and a bourbon knowledgeable friend in Estes Park made their versions of whiskey cocktails for me.

The first thing I discovered is that I prefer rye whiskey as the base alcohol in a mixed cocktail. I like spicy. Spicy food, spicy taste. Apparently spicy bourbon too. Elijah Craig Toasted Rye is very drinkable and delicious in this category.

Secondly, my home-crafted Old Fashioneds tended to be muddled (or pulverized) with a lot of orange and cherry fruit, plus orange and cherry bitters and some orange sparkling water. There were varying amounts of bourbon (or rye) mixed in, too. These attempts can only be described as muddly-fruit-forward cocktails with a splash of booze and extra chewiness at the end. Tasty to some, but questionable or unacceptable to purists.

While visiting our son, I tried his Manhattan, as he enjoys making them and has all the accouterments. He made one with bourbon and one with rye. Again, rye for me please. Still, I returned home musing that my whisky preference remains without an “e” and distilled across the ocean.

The final bourbon taste trial was with my friend, Jim, who is on top of most things whiskey and whisky. He made his version of a traditional Old Fashioned using a wheat bourbon, (Weller Special Reserve), added locally made ponderosa pine syrup, (Rocky Mountain Mugolio), two different kinds of bitters, and garnished it with a slice of navel orange and one Luxardo brand cherry.

I supplied the invisible two-inch ice cubes.

When we tried the same recipe substituting Basil Hayden Rye Bourbon, I perked up with the noticeably spicier first sip.

In the end, as with most experiments, we conclude what we like. Subjective and idiosyncratic to the person. Summation: there is nothing sacred about any recipe or preference for a cocktail beverage. Whiskey for some. Whisky for others. Just enjoy the ritual.

To Craig, I raise my glass and thank you for opening a new world of knowledge. For patiently answering my questions and repeating what you know enough times for me to get it written down. I love your curiosity about so many things along with your creative carpentry skills–particularly with used whiskey barrels. Bourbon and rye and other topics of conversation over PBOFs on the infinity deck, with background music and some competitive and very loud Jenga games make me thankful for not only having you as my whiskey mentor, but a life-long friend.

*End Note:

There are different ways of making clear ice cubes at home. All of them are a good option for filling drinks with invisible ice which highlights the look of the beverage more than opaque white ice maker ice does.

One source: http://www.icemadeclear.com

It takes regular tap water, some freezing space, and an initial financial investment, but the results are worth it. Use the official company website rather than an Amazon variation.

Adam’s Manhattan (AJUM)

Fill cocktail glass with ice to chill.
Fill cocktail pitcher with ice.
Add 2 shots plus a little more bourbon.
Add 2/3 shot sweet vermouth. (Cocchi brand)
Add 1-2 shakes bitters.
Stir, stir, stir to mix and chill.
Discard ice in glass. Use strainer to pour from pitcher.
Add 1 (or 2) cocktail cherries.

A different story set in the North Carolina Mountains, about my friend Gail, is here: Carolina On My Mind

A story about dueling martini tastes between identical twins is here: Of Twins and ‘Tinis

Whisky from Scotland has its own story here: Scottish Highland Liquid Sunshine

Considering the Oyster

January 28, 2026March 5, 2026 / wendyulfers / 20 Comments

Often the place and time help make a certain food what it becomes, even more than the food itself. –M.F.K. Fisher (writer extraordinaire 1908-1992)

This is my experience with oysters. The memory of where I was when I learned to relish raw oysters served in their shell with minimal garnish is stronger than my remembrance of the taste of them. It might be because the best oyster experience in my life occurred during the chilly winter months when we lived in Paris, France. And, typically, on Sunday mornings on our market street.

The discussion of memorable mollusk eating moments surfaced over brunch at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park with four overseas friends, all of whom we met while living in Taipei, Taiwan in the 1990s. These two favorite couples visited us during the first weekend in January. The subject came up of the best calamari, the best mussels, the best shellfish any of us could remember eating. An oyster story came to mind, but the conversation moved on.

As a child, growing up in the middle of the United States, I knew nothing about oysters, raw or cooked. It was “foreign” to the food culture in mid-America and never served at home in any season or for any special occasion. Experimenting with new foods and an expanding palate changed in adulthood after living and traveling around Asia, the Mediterranean, and Europe for three decades from the late 1980’s to the 20-teens. But it was moving to France in 2010 that jump-started my true consideration of the oyster.

As a species, oysters are odd and unattractive creatures. In the wild, after spawning, they drift and roam freely about in the tides for several weeks before attaching themselves to the first hard object randomly bumped into. Once attached, they grow by drinking gallons and gallons of water while straining out the delicious little bits that are food. They live motionless and soundless, trying to escape the notice and menace of predators, not the least of which is man who has a particular hunger for them. Fisher mused, “Its life has been thoughtless but no less full of danger, and once it is over then we (humankind) are perhaps the better for it.”

A commonly held wives’ tale is that oysters are edible only in months with an “R” in them. Not true. May, June, July and August are the months when coastline waters are warmest, and reproduction occurs in wild-harvested oysters. Fisher notes that eating them at this time will not kill you or make you sick, but “…all oysters, like all men, are somewhat weaker after they have done their best at reproducing.”

Oysters are simply good any time of year…if they are fresh, and taster like the taste of oyster. They are nutritionally healthy, full of chemical elements our own bodies house and need–oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen. Vitamins in oysters provide fuel for energy, build healthy bones and teeth, and nourish the skin. And they contain more phosphorus, the most important food for the brain, than any other food source!

Back to Paris. Our market street in the Passy area of the 16^th Arrondissement was noisy, vibrant and colorful on weekend mornings. Parisians chatted with neighbors and friends while sipping “un café” or shopping for ingredients in preparation for “le déjeuner en famille”. Children and dogs were ever present. Live music was often part of the hubbub.

At the beginning of Market Street, on the corner across from our frequented Café Aéro was an all-in-one covered market. The front wall opened to the outside during operating hours, while the green and white tented roof offered overhead protection year-round. Inside, vendors sold everything from fruits and vegetables to fresh flowers, to breads and pastries, cheeses, fish and meats, and even household goods.

In the back, with perhaps four tiny high-top tables and stools, was a seasonal oyster bar. A wall of nondescript beige tiles posted a rusting sign saying, “BAR” in red letters, and a colorful fish underneath. Below the sign behind the bar a man rapidly opened oyster shells with skills that most do not possess. They were piled high on a pan in front of him.

During the busy shopping morning in an unheated market, this minuscule seating area was constantly full of oyster loving customers. With luck and perfect timing, my husband and I slipped onto empty stools at a table for two right next to the bar. And here began the ritual we learned to love.

The petite table was square with white stripes, set with large red paper napkins, a knife and fork. I can’t tell you the name of one oyster we ate all those years, but every variety was delicious and shipped directly from the west coast of France. We pointed, and a dozen were placed immediately in front of us on a round plate with a bowl of fat lemon wedges in the middle. Then, a basket of dark brown bread and sweet butter was delivered, and finally, two glasses of crisp white wine, normally a Chablis from Burgundy. We began by toasting a moment of lusty shellfish eating bliss.

M.F.K. Fisher discovered that a few drops of lemon juice on the buttered bread tasted even better than on the oysters themselves. I tried it both ways–on the oysters and the bread. Her serving opinion proposed this rule “…that all oyster-bars and every self-respecting restaurant…which presumes to serve raw oysters in their shells…should at once make it compulsory to serve also a little plate of thin-sliced buttered good dark bread, preferably the heavy fine-grained kind…and a few quarters of lemon.”

Entirely agree. And that is why eating oysters at the back of a market in Paris wintertime was about more than the taste of fresh seafood. It was about the air temperature, the crowded ambience, the skilled shucking of the oysterman, clinking glasses over our good fortune, squeezing lemon juice over briny oysters, tasting the salt and sea and citrus combined, and then biting into buttered brown bread followed by a swallow of fine wine.

The oyster bar ritual dwindled and lost some consideration when we repatriated home to Colorado. Then, several years later, I fell into another captivating mollusk moment–this time in Washington, DC. As Fisher implied, place and time can outrank food, and this proved true again alongside an icy platter of oysters. Now the place is venerable Old Ebbitt Grill, mostly in the wintertime. Inside, at the antique bar, the precise area where I sit and who I am sitting with creates the magic that follows.

Two well worn wooden stools at the far end, away from the entrance, should be open so that we can slide onto them side-by-side. The chosen ones with me are either my husband or a best friend. Sometimes both. We peer in dim lighting across the burnished surface in front of us to the gilt-edged mirrored wall lined with bottles, greet the bartender, and begin by sipping a good cocktail or a pour of dry white wine or draft beer. We speculate quietly over far-ranging conversation for as long as we want. All the while nourishing ourselves on one or two dozen oysters, with lemon of course.

On a dark wintery Colorado evening, these vignettes keep me company in thoughtful “place and time” reminiscence of food moments shared with people I love everywhere in the world. As the wind outside blows at gale force, I pick up the wrought iron poker on the hearth, add a piece of firewood, and prod ponderosa pine logs from red coals into warm yellow and orange flames.

Holidays!

December 9, 2025December 9, 2025 / wendyulfers / 10 Comments

Warm wishes to All:

In the hope that you are able to spend this holiday season near a toasty fireplace, with good will in your heart, in the surround of family and friends into the coming New Year.

Finding Frank in Taliesin

September 27, 2025October 11, 2025 / wendyulfers / 7 Comments

On a warm October weekend in 2024, I lived in a bedroom on the lower level of Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Shining Brow” home outside the town of Spring Green, Wisconsin. He designed and built it more than 100 years ago in the rolling farm and woodlands where his Welsh ancestors had settled as farmers in the 1840’s. Taliesin, which means Shining Brow, is the Welsh word by which the 800-acre estate is known because it sits on top of the hill and blends seamlessly into the landscape around it. I wanted to experience Wright’s unique design philosophy by spending time in this geography.

Frank Lloyd Wright [1867-1959] was an American architect of renown in the last century. He designed houses and buildings in careful harmony with the natural environment, using the landscape’s resources, materials, and topography as guidelines. In his houses everything complements nature; low slung, wide, cantilevered eaves and flat rooflines, walls of windows framed in wood, and always a large, centrally located open fireplace. He designed the lighting and the furniture too, believing that spaces [both practical and aesthetic) should serve how people move and feel within them.

entry seating area with portrait of his mother, anna wright

cornered window, separation from settling

Since I was a young child, I have been intrigued by houses, how we create spaces in them that resonate with our spirit. I remember when I fell in fascination with Frank Lloyd Wright as a creator of special “places”. In my first job as a Pediatric nurse in Madison, Wisconsin, one of my colleagues lived with her boyfriend and several other people in a house they were renting. When I walked in, I felt something visceral; this was a place and a space that made me feel like I wanted to wake up there every day. A huge open fireplace in a large living room, red polished floors, floor to ceiling walls of windows bringing light and outside greenery in. I asked my friend if another bedroom was available to rent. I would have moved in that day.

Frank Lloyd Wright was a complicated genius, as many artists are apt to be. As the only son in an extremely dysfunctional marriage between a preacher and a teacher, his mother put all her efforts toward the goal that Frank would be an architect. He played for hours as a young boy building complex designs with geometric shaped blocks, called Froebel’s Gifts and Occupations, which she ordered from Germany. The “Gifts”, used educationally in advanced German kindergartens, consisted of different sized blocks, pegs, pieces of colorful paper or yarn. They were instrumental in fueling his imagination for crystalline and geometric design shapes.

seated at desk in studio, from photograph inside Taliesin

The premise of living at Taliesin for a weekend was a workshop on bread baking taught by Bazile (Elizabeth) Booth, a Spring Green baker. It was offered to a small group. Only ten people. Because we were paying guests and living on the grounds, we had the privilege of a private tour of the house and the Hillside School. The school, designed by Wright, was his first professional project in 1886. It was built for his aunts who taught a progressive day school curriculum. A later wing was added as an architectural drafting studio for interns, fellows and apprentices who lived and worked on site. We had freedom to wander the estate during the weekend, so I took advantage of photographing everything Wright designed–the school and apprentice studio, the big red barn, the Romeo and Juliet windmill, the family Unity Chapel, as well as the house and grounds.

architectural studio for apprentices, adjacent to hillside school

curtain designed by wright in hillside school theater

main living room with grand piano (not pictured) used for impromptu evening singing and music concerts

Frank inherited his father’s short stature and good looks, his charismatic charm and engaging ability to tell a story, his lifelong talent and love for music. Wright was a poor student and never obtained a degree in his chosen field. He had a terrible reputation with finances, cost overruns, and not meeting timelines. He presented himself with panache and flair in both speech and attire. Capes, canes, and porkpie hats were his later signature dressing style. He held lofty opinions of himself and his creative gifts and proclaimed them often, and publicly. He was conservative and religious by upbringing, but his actions were ingrained by the family motto “Truth against the World”. He used this to justify his nonconforming professional and life choices.

Our baking workshop group was geographically represented from the east coast to the west, the south, and the mountains of Colorado. There was a mother/daughter duo, a married couple, and the rest of us came as single bakers–four men and six women. Several people were already experienced bread bakers. After the welcoming introductory afternoon including a champagne reception in Taliesin’s main living room, touring the house’s inner sanctums, and dinner in town, we were bonded as a group.

I was probably the least interested in taking sourdough bread making into my own kitchen, challenged by an altitude of 8300 feet. I might have been the most versed in Frank Lloyd Wright history, trivia, and lore. To each their own interests. But baking my own “boule” of country loaf was what got me there and set the daily schedule of morning and afternoon. We started right after breakfast on Day 2.

Bazile Booth is a professional baker with a successful storefront and business in downtown Spring Green. She is also a great teacher with a laid-back approach toward getting 10 pairs of hands to wind up with a successful loaf of bread. We measured and weighed ingredients, then waited to let the natural fermentation process of water and flour and sourdough starter begin their magic.

the sticky, the stretching, and the resting part

Bazile whipping up a huge batch of seeded rye

We hovered over our bowls, cheered each other’s success while bubbles formed as the yeast grew active. We stretched and turned the dough to aerate it. It took all day.

We didn’t bake the bread until Day 3. Instead, the dough “rested” in cloth lined baskets in the refrigerator until it was successfully turned into a beautiful brown loaf the next morning. After the final lunch we claimed our loaves to take home as if they were newborn babies.

yeast bubbles! and showing off the dough before refrigerating

Frank Lloyd Wright evolved into a successful and sought after architectural designer who was artistically ahead of his time. Then, he fell deeply in love with the wife of a neighbor and client in Oak Park, Illinois at a time when marriages were not easily dissolved. When they could no longer deny their attraction and desire to be together, Frank and Mamah (pronounced May-ma) sat together with their spouses, Catherine Wright and Edwin Cheney, to explain the situation. Frank’s Victorian-era wife flatly refused to divorce him so Frank and Mamah left the country for a year, in 1909, where they both worked in Europe.

Mamah was intelligent, highly educated, lovely, and an early feminist before that was a trend. Fluent in several languages, she taught school while in Germany. Then she was hired to translate the writings of a Swedish feminist, Evelyn Keys, whose work she and Frank admired and followed. Some of it formed the basis of what they believed about living together in love, even without a legal contract. Frank was busy working on a portfolio book of his work for publication in Berlin. They were often apart, but it was a break from the excruciating gossip back home. Upon returning in 1910, Edwin Cheney divorced Mamah, but Catherine Wright steadfastly refused to sign papers. Instead, she encouraged media attention to humiliate and denigrate her husband who broke convention and remained in his relationship with Mamah.

In 1911, to escape relentless criticism fueled by the newspapers, Wright designed and built Taliesin in the ancestral countryside west of Madison on land his mother purchased.

Three years later, in August 1914, Lloyd Wright suffered a devastating loss of love and property when a mentally deranged employee killed seven people on the estate while Frank and one of his sons were working on an uncompleted project (Midway Gardens) in Chicago. It was more gruesome than anyone could imagine, especially for Wright when returning to the aftermath.

Julian Carlton, houseman at the time, served the lunch soup on a hot summer day to Mamah and her two children, seated on a screened-in porch. Then he broke her skull with a “shingling hatchet” before turning the weapon on young John and Martha. Workers, gardeners, and apprentices were dining in another area of the house. Julian again served the soup, bolted the door shut, spread gasoline outside the room until it ran underneath the door, then ignited it. Men who tried to escape were attacked with the hatchet. By the end of that horrific day, seven people were murdered by axing and/or burning to death. Two-thirds of Taliesin was in smoldering ashes.

Frank’s son, John Lloyd Wright, made this observation about his father. “Something in him died with her, a something lovable and gentle that I knew and loved…As I reflect now, I am convinced that the love that united them was deep, sincere and holy in spite of its illegality–I am convinced that the woman for whom he left home was of noble character.”

Wright, numbed by emotional and physical pain, his body broken out in boils, eventually realized that faith and hope were now lost to him. “Something strange had happened to me. Instead of feeling that she, whose life had joined mine there at Taliesin, was a spirit near, she was utterly gone. After the first anguish of loss, a kind of black despair seemed to paralyze my imagination in her direction and numbed my sensibilities. The blow was too severe.” As a form of consolation, he felt that only by immersing in the work of rebuilding Taliesin could he get relief. “In action, there is release from anguish of mind.”

mamah’s resting place in the cemetery, headstone added much later, with inscription and signature by flw: “We lived–richly”

Taliesin II rose from the ashes in a completely new rendition. And then again, in 1925, when faulty wiring caused another fire, Wright rebuilt it for the third time into the current version.

One hundred years after the second redesign and rebuilding of Taliesin I walked around the estate grounds as the light changed from late afternoon to dusk. I wanted to feel what Frank and Mamah lived together in this rich green farmland with the hills and a river running through it. I wondered why Wright was compelled to rebuild after not one, but two devastating fires. What was it about this rural setting on a verdant hillside with expansive views overlooking the Wisconsin River that inspired him to continue life there after immeasurable tragedy?

I worked my way around the landscape, sitting in various spots to photograph scenery and imagining the bevy of apprentice architects who laboriously built the stone walls, walkways, and gardens a long time ago. I thought about how and why it framed Frank and Mamah’s short life together there over three years. The reasons began in his childhood.

Frank’s love and loyalty to the land began as a boy when he labored on Uncle James Lloyd-Jones’ farm summer after summer. It was a grueling learning curve to a stronger body and a fierce work ethic. He termed the phrase, “tired on tired” to describe the relentless fatigue and suffering endured from being wakened at 4:00 AM until falling into bed at night. But that steady seasonal diet of hard physical farm work set a high standard for the rest of his working life, seven decades, until his death at 92.

Wisconsin farmland, orchards, green wooded hills, a flowing river and nature were Wright’s roots. He built and rebuilt Taliesin here, pushing through times of great loss and suffering through the work. He returned when he needed to go home and restore his spirit. The landscape and the memories were the foundation of his physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health.

I first encountered the term “spiritual geography” in a book by Kathleen Nolan called Dakota: A Spiritual Geography. It’s the story of how she returned to the territory of her upbringing in South Dakota when her grandparents died. She and her husband traveled from New York City to settle the estate and ended up staying there for 25 years. The premise is that where you are from forms a part of your spiritual expression and never leaves you. Spiritual geography is the beginning of how we see and inhabit the world and how it inhabits us. It is where and how we learn the lessons to slow down, savor peace, solitude, and open spaces (where they are available). We take the lessons from our earliest remembered spiritual geographies and live the concept wherever we go.

I understand it two ways. My early childhood years were spent in a small suburb of St. Louis, Missouri with regular visits to the farm where my grandmother lived 30 miles away. It gave me comforts, freedoms and connection to both city and country living. Later, moving to Colorado in married life, a small town in the mountains bordering a national park became my grown-up spiritual geography. As we navigated life with two children in five countries around the world, always creating a home wherever we lived, I knew where the permanent “home” was waiting. It was where we refreshed our spirits every summer during the overseas years–in a mountainous landscape larger than we were that diminished the small details of life.

long’s peak from trail ridge road, first snow, september 2025, estes park, colorado

Frank Lloyd Wright’s return to the rural hills of his youth regenerated and nurtured his soul over a lifetime. Later, after his marriage to Olgivanna, he created a second spiritual geography near Scottsdale, Arizona. The desert environment and beauty of the southwest resonated with them both. Taliesin West was built, using the landscape as a guide, for their winter home. Wisconsin and Arizona remained an important summer/winter hiatus for the rest of their lives. They found spiritual renewal in both places.

The weekend at Taliesin reinforced my belief that how we create and inhabit our homes and personal spaces is another form of spiritual geography. Not landscape based, but living based. If we are fortunate, we can have both. Our home spaces (and how we live in them) provide emotional nurturing, too. Developing “inside geography” takes thought and effort. It requires letting go of anyone and everyone else’s notions of what is nourishing and meaningful in your life. It requires spending real time thinking, imagining, and playing with both practical and aesthetic beauty. Then, as Frank Lloyd Wright, you go about the work. You take up the action by collecting, arranging and rearranging. It’s a continual process. It can evolve over years. But, in time, you wake up every day in your version of spiritual geography.

WHY I LOVE WISCONSIN

By Frank Lloyd Wright

(Excerpts from an essay posted inside the Taliesin house)

I love Wisconsin because my staunch old Welsh grandfather with my gentle grandmother and their 10 children settled here nearby. I see the site of their homestead and those of their offspring as I write. Offspring myself, my home and workshop are planted on the ground grandfather and sons broke before the Indians had entirely gone away.

This Wisconsin valley with the spring-water stream winding down as its center line has been looked forward to or back upon by me and mine from all over the world, as home.

And I come back from the distant, strange, and beautiful places that I used to read about when I was a boy and wonder about; yes, every time I come back here it is with the feeling there is nothing anywhere better than this is.

More dramatic elsewhere, perhaps more strange, more thrilling, more grand, too, but nothing that picks you up in its arms and so gently, almost lovingly, cradles you as do these southwestern Wisconsin hills…

…Wisconsin soil has put sap into my veins. Why, I should love her as I loved my mother, my old grandmother, and as I love my work.

Wright’s current headstone in Unity Chapel cemetery with Mamah’s seen behind. When third wife Olgivanna died, she stipulated that his remains be removed from Wisconsin and buried with her at Taliesin West. His inscription reads: “Love of an Idea, Love of God.”

Resources (and quotes) used in this story are from:

Frank Lloyd Wright, A Life by Ada Louise Huxtable, 2004, Penguin Books (a short and very readable biography of the man, accounting for both flaws and genius)

Death in a Prairie House by William Drennan, 2007, University of Wisconsin Press (a detailed background, history, and accounting of the murders at Taliesin in 1914)

Dakota: A Spiritual Geography by Kathleen Norris, 1993, Houghton Mifflin Co. (coming home to find yourself)

A Brave and Lovely Woman, Mamah Borthwick and Frank Lloyd Wright by Mark Borthwick, 2023, University of Wisconsin Press (distant relative of Mamah Borthwick writes a detailed portrait of her life, before and with FLW)

More about creating spiritual geography at home: The Poetry of Space

Childhood spiritual geography in rural Missouri: The Coleman House, Villa Ridge, Missouri

Adult spiritual geography in the Colorado mountains: Bugling Elk and Sacred Spaces

End Note:

Over the past year the true bread bakers in our Taliesin workshop have shared multiple emails with suggestions, successes and failures, tidbits learned in their home kitchens, encouragements, book recommendations and photos. It remains a group where the journey continues in practice and spirit. I came to Taliesin because of an artisanal bread workshop and to gather information to write a story. I dedicate this to all the bakers from that weekend, and to Elizabeth (Bazile) Booth, teacher extraordinaire, owner of Sky Blue Pink Bakery in Spring Green, and Caroline Hamblen, our guide and Director of Programs at Taliesin Preservation.

Casual Animal Brewing Company, KC, MO

July 13, 2025September 8, 2025 / wendyulfers / 11 Comments

This is a factual but personal story about my daughter & son-in-law’s entrepreneurial, creative, community and philanthropic spirit in the business they created together. These two inspire me.

In the Crossroads area of downtown Kansas City, Missouri, directly across the street from the attractive brick façade of the former Kansas City Star Newspaper, resides Casual Animal Brewing Company.

On the outside, a colorful mural is painted above a window that opens like a garage door when the weather favors outdoor seating. The bar stools, where customers sit and sip cold craft beer, overlook the sidewalk as pedestrians pass by.

Inside, industrial steel cylinders are tucked under open ceiling beams and skylights. Hanging Boston ferns trail down from above and a tall Umbrella tree reaches upward to the central skylight. The seating is mostly handmade wooden tables. Refinished log stools line the sides of one long table. Leather sofas and cushioned chairs are placed in cozy conversation corners surrounded by potted green plants.

exposed rafters, steel cylinders, and strings of lights

center stage Schefflera tree under skylight

kyle art wallpaper, darts, and the door connecting new and old sides

Colorful oriental carpets lay on the cement floor in a patchwork fashion. Shuffleboard, darts, and boxes of board games are ready to play with family or friends. Strings of lights are draped throughout, exposed brick walls create texture, along with original art wallpaper and paintings designed by head brewer, Kyle Gray. He also happens to co-own Casual Animal with his wife, Lara. The overall atmosphere of this craft brewery exudes laid-back ease with an infusion of warm ambience. You want to sit down, order a beer from one of eleven full taps, and just hang out for a while.

Kyle runs the “back of the house”; creating beer recipes, brewing twice a week in a 7- barrel system, canning, designing logos for labels or merchandise sold online and directly from the brewery. Lara takes charge of the “front of the house”, staffing and training, social media and marketing, taproom events, distribution and delivery in local restaurants, liquor stores and bars.

Lara is also the current President of the East Crossroads. This is their neighborhood organization whose goal is to unify all area businesses as a destination entertainment district for locals, conferences, business travelers, and vacationers. One important aspect is to increase traffic and retail business for the diversity of restaurants, small shops, craft breweries, and cocktail bars in Crossroads. Recently she has helped the neighborhood receive $35,000 in grant monies from the city of Kansas City. This will be used for commercial branding, highlighting the district with streetlight pole banners, directional signage, and other resources.

The Beginnings Through a Pandemic to Today

The background of how Casual Animal Brewery was first dreamed and conceived by Kyle and Lara in 2017-18 is a compelling story of its own, and told here: Becoming a Casual Animal

The story of the opening of the larger, plant-draped conservatory side of the brewery began just before the shutdown of the Coronavirus pandemic. In November 2019, Kyle was taking trash out to a dumpster in the back alley. A secretary from a neighboring business was standing outside on a break. She asked Kyle if he knew the building next door to the brewery was for sale. At the time, it was a truck storage warehouse with zero infrastructure. But it was big and shared a common wall.

Kyle called the owner, toured the space and applied for a loan in February of 2020. They closed on the property in May of that year when the whole country was hibernating at home amid the uncertainties of Coronavirus. Kyle’s brother, Alex, was hired as General Contractor and moved into their house for the next nine months.

The risk of taking on a new, larger loan and beginning a complete renovation to expand Casual Animal (by more than doubling its size) started in earnest while a global pandemic was raging. Kyle had serious doubts and anxieties about moving forward, but ultimately decided there was no better time to expand the brewery than with this serendipitous opportunity.

Crafting a New Craft Brewery

Deconstruction before construction. Kyle, with Alex and their father, Kass, jump started the demolition. There was junk removal of heavy lath, bundles of old wire, and equipment. The linoleum floor tiles were scraped clean to the concrete underlayment. In the rear space that now houses four 15-barrel fermenters, an old ceiling of tin, wire, and plaster was painstakingly cut out, dropped, and hauled away.

Plaster walls were blasted with a jack hammer to reveal the brick underneath. It was hard, excruciating and dirty work. Finally, Alex said, “Stop. Leave some of the wall plaster and call it done.” It is an attractive stopping point. Alex then got busy and built bathrooms, the new, larger bar area, and engaged in even dirtier work by climbing high into the ceiling rafters to painstakingly clean away 100 years of industrial dust and grime!

looking from new side to original side with brick and plaster walls

Subcontractors installed electricity, HVAC, plumbing, and the front garage door window to match the original side of Casual Animal. Creating openings into the common walls required considerable consultation with structural engineers because both buildings are more than a century old. In the end, doorway-sized holes were sawed through two walls (one for each building) and reinforced with steel beams. And just like that–the taprooms and brewing areas were connected.

Debut Side 2

In January 2021, nine months after taking possession, with the mask mandate and six feet of separation still in full effect, Casual Animal, side two, opened to the public.

From the beginning, the word got out, and the people flocked in. The high ceilings, the big windows and skylights, the greenery and wide spacing between tables and “living room” conversation corners were a welcome reason for being with friends in public again. There was a feeling of being safe in your own “pod”. Families, and dogs, welcome. Everyone loves the casual-animal-dogs-are-welcome theme.

high ceilings, string lights, open windows and greenery

The Current Vibe

Last fall, with the garage door opened wide on a perfect autumn day, I sat in my favorite spot next to the wall at one end of the bar–the best vantage point to soak in the early afternoon atmosphere. Sunlight was streaming in from the central skylight, customers were working on computers or talking in quiet conversation around the room. Mellow music provided soft background sound. The back brewing area behind the big tap room was clean and quiet. Tables were laid around the tall central Schefflera tree in a spoke-like pattern over the oriental carpets. Kyle-designed merchandise was hung on hangers, or neatly stacked on shelves––t-shirts, hoodies, baseball hats, water bottles. Next to the merchandise, a glass front refrigerator displayed the current variety of canned six-packs for take away. Customers regularly strolled to the bar to place an order.

a quiet work space early in the day or conversation with a friend

Seven women entered as a group. None of them drank beer. They ordered red sangria (locally made and canned, but not in-house), rosé wine, and vodka spritzes (a house-made cocktail on draft). The friends sat down to play Kansas City Trivia in a lively fashion.

It’s now late Friday afternoon. The scene is growing steadily livelier as more people arrive, order a beer, and mingle with friends. Darts and shuffleboard are active. A group of twelve takes up the center court tables under the skylight and tree. They are standing, sitting, talking, laughing, taking pictures and enjoying themselves.

Kirstie, with 4+ years on staff, works the tap room, knows and can talk in detail about every style of beer. She offers a taste to customers who are particular or unsure. Erika has also worked at the brewery for four years. She spent 2 ½ years brewing with Kyle. Now she works in the front of the house, serving and chatting up customers. Ethan started at Casual Animal in 2018 when the first side opened. He left two years later, then returned in 2024 to become the assistant brewer with Kyle. These three, along with the rest of the employees, embody the small business model of a loyal Casual Animal family. They know their regular customers and suggest who I might approach with a few questions.

I sat down with a couple who told me they live within walking distance and often come after work or on a day off. What they love; always a likeable beer flavor in rotating fashion, the ambience of hanging lights, skylights, garage-door-open windows, the mash-up of decorating textures, the food pop-ups. As to the beer, he likes all Lagers, she is more experimental and willing to try different styles.

Another couple has a newborn. They have been coming to Casual Animal since the time of Covid when their first baby arrived. After getting vaccinated they brought the infant with them to get out of the house into a cool environment to sit and talk and sip beer. Now they are repeating the cycle three years later with baby number two. They love the plants, the trees, the natural lighting, the soft seating. They wish food was served regularly but enjoy the pop-up vendors that rotate through on a regular basis.

Madi has been a regular casual animal for 3-4 years. She comes in the early afternoons during the week, when it is mellow and quieter, to work on her computer. She always sits at the bar, knows and likes the staff, and chats with them while working.

Commitment to Community

Local Motive is the name of Casual Animal’s fund-raising beer selection, sold to support Kansas City non-profit organizations. It was written into their business plan from the start, as a way of giving back to the local community. It began as a quarterly offering for the first two years. However, for half of 2020 and all of 2021, during Covid, it was placed on hold.

Now Local Motive rotates to a new charitable cause every two months. Two dollars from the sale of every pint of one specially selected “Local Motive” beer is donated to the non-profit’s cause at the end of a rotation period. Each non-profit can organize events at the brewery to educate the public and optimize giving during their cycle. Some of these have involved trivia nights, live music, or bringing in rescued kittens and puppies for adoption.

Lara and Kyle annually select from a wide variety of Local Motive applications submitted on their website, choose about 15 that meet the criteria they have set, and present them to the staff. The staff votes for six non-profits as local motive recipients for the upcoming year. By the end of 2025, over the past 8 years, Casual Animal will have hit a new marker for giving back–more than $100,000 flowing into the Kansas City community and helping 30+ organizations.

Better Together

There is a collaborative relationship between Casual Animal, other breweries, and even farmers. Kyle has generated several co-branding ventures to promote a new beer, such as with Odell Brewing in Ft. Collins, Colorado, Cinder Block, Double Shift, Big Rip and others in the Kansas City area. This is usually a one-of-a-kind endeavor to co-produce something different and even experimental in the craft beer industry.

Then there are the livestock farmers. Kyle has always donated his spent grains, barley, oats, wheat and rye, to farmers as feed for pigs, chickens, cows. In the past several years a joint relationship was formed with KC Cattle Company. Head rancher Marc Wermersen has loved cows since childhood. He is in charge of hand raising and feeding 275 head of selective Wagyu beef cattle.

spent grains for KC Cattle Company Wagyu cows

Wagyu is the American version of the highly marbled, tender, Kobe beef from Japan. For these cows, fed largely on pasture grass, the small grains extracted from Kyle’s tanks (mixed with corn) are a high energy supplemental food. As Marc says, “Good feed equals good beef equals good taste.” The relationship is reciprocal. The brewery receives Wagyu summer sausage and shaved peppered beef to serve as charcuterie meats in the taproom. Marc often gifts the brew team with steaks, ground meat, and award-winning beef hotdogs.

Special Events

Planning and organizing events is one aspect of Lara’s on-site job description. Currently, Casual Animal offers special taproom evenings such as Wednesday Art Night, where coloring and painting supplies are available to dabble in, or pop-up food vendors serving inside or from trucks on the street. There is an annual Earth Day celebration on April 22.

Perhaps the most popular and very highly attended event is the Kitten Pop-Up Party. KC Pet Project, a no-kill pet shelter as well as a former Local Motive recipient, currently sponsors a bi-annual Kitten Party offering rescued babies for adoption. Foster parents bring their kitten charges in baby buggies or pet carriers and customers are allowed to cuddle, play with, and love up the kitties while foster moms and dads supervise. Singles, couples, families, and kids all participate in a standing room crowd.

Being Beer Specific

And what about those beer flavors served up from Kyle’s creative, revolving list of recipes? There is a favorite taste for every palate–hazy IPAs, sours, dark stouts, lagers, Kolsch, cold IPAs, West Coast IPAs, wheat beer, nitro offerings, including some atypical choices such as an Ice Cream ale.

When I asked Kyle and Lara to name Casual Animal’s most requested and top selling beverage choices, they said (although it varies somewhat), #1 is the Hazy IPA, #2 is a Lager, #3 a Wheat or Sour choice, #4 and #5 rotate between another kind of IPA or the Local Motive choice. Moving up in line of popularity is the Vodka Spritz draft cocktail made on site and sold on draft as a gluten free option. There is always a hard cider on tap for non-beer palates as well.

Styles of beer have creative names that are usually animal-related to the brewery theme. Animal Control Cold IPA, Bear Hug Brown, Climbing Wolf Hopped Lager, Hyper Lynx French Pilsner, Vipers in the Garden Hard Cider, Blue Flamingo Fruited Sour, Luminary Canary Kolsch, and my personal name favorite–Chaos Monkey Hefeweizen.

This is Your Third Place

So, what’s left to tell? Perhaps it’s time to stroll into Casual Animal when you find yourself in Kansas City or peruse their creative website for merchandise if you’re not. Go with friends, with family, or by yourself to work on a quiet afternoon in a beautiful environment, to attend an evening event, to plan a gathering, to sit and drink good craft beer, to listen to background music or watch a special sports event like the Super Bowl with a crowd.

Casual Animal is the classic drop-in, home-away-from-home, relaxed and easygoing brewery you have been searching for. Meet friends and stake out your favorite seats in the house.

From its origins, Casual Animal was conceived of and built to represent the “Third Place”. That other place you seek after home and after work. It’s the place you go to relax and let go, to find joy and camaraderie, to feel safe, and to have fun. It’s not just about the beer or the greenery or the skylights. What it is…no actually, what it’s about, is being somewhere else, spending good time with people in warm and welcoming community surroundings.

Isn’t that something we all need?

CASUAL ANIMAL BREWING COMPANY
1725 McGee St, Kansas City, MO 64108, USA
Telephone: +1(816) 648-0184
Hours: Monday-Thursday, 12-9PM, Friday & Saturday, 12-10PM, Sunday, 12-7PM
www.casualanimalbrewing.com
Facebook: Casual Animal Brewing Co.
Instagram: casualanimalbrewing

When the first side of Casual Animal opened in early February 2018, the Gray family was brewing their first baby, and daughter Sloan was born in October 2018. When they closed on the building for the second side, in May of 2020, son Isaac had just entered the world on May 13. The Grays today are a beautiful family of four.

Carla’s Dogs, One Year Later

May 3, 2025August 1, 2025 / wendyulfers / 8 Comments

A year ago, I wrote a story about my friend Carla Walker in Athens, Greece. She is a dog lover since childhood, has a menagerie of her own strays (18), and for the past several decades has boarded dogs for owners who are traveling and need a home away from home for their pet. Since moving to a different rural location without any infrastructure five years ago, Carla has been seeking supportive ways to rebuild and resume her business while caretaking her own dogs. When I wrote her extraordinary life story, it offered the possibility of contributing to this mission. For the complete history and Carla’s connection with Cabby Tennis and Maddy Hewitt, read Carla’s Dogs.

Here is what has transpired over the past year through voluntary crowd funding. Last September a large cement base was constructed behind the “View House” where it is backed by the stone wall of the property. This was to serve as the foundation for three large individual kennels which were purchased and shipped, unassembled, on pallets from northern Greece.

kennels arrive on pallets, cement slab foundation, quality control inspection

In February, Cabby Tennis spent days building three steel kennels consisting of many pieces, bolted them together and to the wall behind, with Carla assisting and supervising. The roof lines were angled and tiled to drain rainwater over the wall. Extra caulking was applied to the exterior and interior bases to also prevent water from running inside during heavy rains.

time lapse of one kennel construction with dogs running through it

In April the kennels were carpeted with soft, green Astroturf for color and comfort. They are now ready to be outfitted with dog houses, and soon, animals for boarding.

carla with completed kennels, april 2025

Also, a computer was purchased so Carla now has the means to rebuild her website and advertise for short term dog boarding and the ability to Adopt-a-Pet virtually, which will contribute to consistent upkeep for food, vaccinations, medications, and vet care for the tribe.

For those who have donated to complete these projects over the past year, a heartfelt THANK YOU. There is still future work requiring financial support including exterior and interior painting, ceiling insulation and repair throughout the inside of the house to keep people and animals warm and dry in all seasons. There are ongoing monthly expenses for food, neutering and spaying, and vet care for the full-time resident dogs.

For anyone who loves dogs or a good dog story, there is a way to contribute or re-contribute to the future welfare and maintenance of Carla’s Magical Dog Kingdom.

You can donate to a VENMO account in the U.S. established for this purpose. If you already have an account, search the VENMO app for: Cabby Tennis @Dog-Kingdom. Be sure to include your name, mailing address, and email address on the form. For another way to contribute, contact Wendy at windowtoalifeoverseas@gmail.com

Carla is steadfast and unflinching in doing her part of good work in the world. She may have encountered more obstacles than many of us, but she is strongly committed to providing shelter and care for the four-legged creatures who live under her roof and run happily around the garden and olive orchard. Her unshakeable affirmation of purpose in providing animals with a good life is a reminder of how we can all make a difference, even with small acts of kindness.

Final Photos:

Hope as a Destination

February 18, 2025September 3, 2025 / wendyulfers / 16 Comments

…and my life is still, trying to get up that great big hill, of hope, for a destination. I realized quickly when I knew I should, that the world was made up of this brotherhood, of man…And so I wake in the morning and I step outside, and I take a deep breath and I get real high, and I scream at the top of my lungs, “What’s going on?” –Linda Perry, 4 Non Blondes, song “What’s Up?”, 1993

Recently, I made an overnight trip to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to visit my “artist buddy” Jane Filer. Several years ago, I wrote a biographical story about her life and her paintings after we met in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Read: Being Jane Filer Two of her pieces are in our living room, “Eclipse” and “Elephant Journey”, both of them highlighted in the article.

jane in the garden with headless hat woman

The premise of traveling to her home was a painting I noticed and kept returning to on her website janefiler.com under “Available Work”. It was entitled “Above the Bridge”. I finally called Jane and said I was really drawn to this one but needed to see the painting in person to know how it made me feel. She agreed, and we set a date.

It was two years since we had last seen each other, but we fell into conversation easily, as friends generally do. I noticed the changes in her home and property since the last time I was there. A large shed had been renovated and turned into a gallery for on-site weekend art shows, there were now two cats in residence, and she started an outdoor project of reconfiguring stone pavers by outlining them with colorful pottery and pieces of glass. I picked up an alabaster egg on a windowsill to admire its smooth shape and beautiful translucency in my hand. She insisted that I take it home.

When we went into the studio to view the painting, Jane showed me a recently finished piece entitled “Congregation”. It was colorful and typical of her “primal modern” style which emanates from her dreaming-while-awake imagination. Then she moved “Above the Bridge” to the easel for my viewing. And I just knew. This was going to be my painting.

The question is why? What resonated? Like so much of Jane’s art, there are layers upon layers to see and feel and think about. Then you bring your own meaning to it. The details I first noticed were two small black figures “under the bridge”. One is swimming strongly onward; the other is rising to the surface with one arm extended straight upward.

Musing about these small figures under the bridge with the larger world painted above the bridge struck me as symbolic and meaningful. Right now. These are actions to aim for; onward and upward. For anyone, for everyone.

the rest of the world above and below the bridge

In the current American climate, where everything is moving in the direction of political dismantling and destruction, many people want, and need, to find what can be done now, while also moving toward the future. Then I thought; these are the same movements–the actions we take in the present are what we will continue to do in the future.

Poets, artists, and writers are often sources of inspiration about what is needed in trying times. Art cuts deep to the marrow of reminding us how to refocus and get moving in stressful times, whether personal, cultural, political, or global.

Almost every generation of Americans for the past 250 years has encountered and eventually survived some kind of catastrophic period; revolution followed by war, destructive civil war, two world wars, years of severe economic depression, McCarthyism, a decade of political assassinations and riots, the unpopular 10-year Vietnamese war, murderous terrorist attacks, devastating viral pandemics. Just as it seems that so much changes within generations; history teaches that great things can, and do, persist after turmoil.

We all have a part in shifting the story. –Joy Harjo, 23^rd U.S. Poet Laureate

Inside the head spinning turn of extreme change our democracy is currently undergoing, what part, as Harjo suggests, can we play in shifting the story?

It’s really the same part we play throughout life. First, we learn, we adapt, and we move forward with what we can control. Adaptive change often means taking on complex challenges that seem impossible in the beginning. Staying immobilized doesn’t help the situation. You have to try. Like the feeling a piece of art instills, we bring the meaning and sense to what can change and what we can change.

I read a story about a woman, Maureen Morris, who opened a coffee shop called Back Street Brews in a small, politically polarized Virginia town several years ago. During a time of stridently vocal opposing sides, she pushed the notion of a gentler America inside her café. Everyone was welcome to openly discuss their views, but there would be no attacking or judging. “If it comes up, as long as it’s respectful, you can talk about whatever your beliefs are…If you are a staunch this or staunch that, I always say, keep that out of here.”

Customers began asking about each other’s family or simply shooting the breeze over coffee. Discussion groups of varying topics began showing up. Maureen’s café became known as a quiet force of civility while crossing the political divide inside a public space. Neighborly ways, respect, and social ties persist.

Ordinary people created a community where they listen and speak to each other without shouting. All due to one woman’s insistence that, amid the divisiveness of an era, she would lead from the strength of her beliefs. “It’s affecting people. Not me. Not in my bubble. We’re going to be fine, everyone! We’re going to land on our feet in my coffee bubble.”

This is how an individual shifts the story. By accomplishing small things that perhaps no one notices in the big picture but has real impact on people’s lives. Everyday lives. We nurture and nourish everyone in our circle of family, acquaintances, friends. We take care of ourselves. We stay true to our values.

Because there is a remnant of change that begins with one act of kindness, one spoken truth, one considerate conversation, one shared laugh, one poem, painting, or story. These are ways to move the narrative.

A brief scene in the old Hollywood movie, Casablanca, with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman offers another example of one person’s action to restore balance.

During a busy evening in Rick’s American Café, a casino and piano bar in Casablanca, there is a scuffle when the thief Ugarte is discovered by authorities. After Rick refuses to hide him, Ugarte is hustled out in a loud commotion surrounded by police. The music stops and customers sit mutely, in stunned silence.

Afterward, Rick (Bogart) apologizes for the uproar, reassures everyone that the trouble is over, everything is all right, and they should continue having a good time. He speaks calmly to the crowd, tells Sam to resume playing, and without breaking stride re-rights an overturned wine glass on a table.

…the saloonkeeper’s cool response to Ugarte’s arrest and his instruction for the band to play on could suggest a certain indifference to the fates of men. But in setting upright that cocktail glass in the aftermath of the commotion, didn’t he also exhibit an essential faith that by the smallest of one’s actions, one can restore some sense of order to the world? –Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

As we find our part in “restoring some sense of order”, we also climb “that great big hill of hope”. And make it a destination.

Poems and songs are written to get our minds thinking…in an unexpected way.

TROUGH

There is a trough in waves,
a low spot
where horizon disappears
and only sky
and water are our company.

And there we lose our way
unless
we rest, knowing the wave will bring us
to its crest again.

There we may drown
if we let fear
hold us with in its grip and shake us
side to side,
and leave us flailing, torn, disoriented.

But if we rest there
in the trough,
in silence,
being with
the low part of the wave,
keeping our energy and 
noticing the shape of things,
the flow,
then time alone
will bring us to another
place
where we can see 
horizon, see the land again,
regain our sense
of where
we are,
and where we need to swim.  

–Judy Brown

...Come dance with the west wind and touch on the mountaintops
Sail o'er the canyons and up to the stars
And reach for the heavens and hope for the future
And all that we can be and not what we are...

–John Denver, song The Eagle and the Hawk, 1971

Fun Final Photo Shoot:

Breaking Bread in Taiwan

September 3, 2024August 26, 2025 / wendyulfers / 11 Comments

We lived overseas for 31 years and became acquainted with a variety of characters who chose the same lifestyle we did. Many were our close friends. When those friends moved to different international schools in other countries, it was difficult to stay in touch with each other’s lives. Now, when I think back on all the places we lived; Singapore, Cyprus, Taiwan, Germany and France, some of those people we knew well are no longer together and some are gone.

Yet the memory of a specific moment of friendship and fun surfaces instantly with the mention of a familiar name from long ago. Even when that moment contains elements of being less than perfect. And especially if remembering it makes me laugh.

We arrived at Taipei American School in Taiwan one August with a group of educators who bonded quickly. Relationships developed easily over shared activities and interests. We were all living outside of our home cultures, and we all sought connections and enduring friendships. In addition to sharing holidays, vacations and travel, one of the best connecting places was around the dining room table.

Bob and Valerie were married to each other when we knew them in Taipei. Bob was more than a decade older than Valerie, with a background in private schools in the U.S. before embarking on an adventure in overseas education. His everyday on-the-job attire included a bowtie which he pulled off with dress-for-success propriety. He loved literature and could discuss books at length. He was perfectly matched to his job in Advancement and Fund Raising at the school. A charmer who could talk to anyone. And then get them to donate large sums of money. He was also an excellent cook and throwing a dinner party to perfection was his gift to friends.

In the years we lived in Taipei, eating out culture was yin and yang. All forms of excellent Asian food were readily available in restaurants. But, in our Tien Mu neighborhood, food was typically served and eaten in mediocre surroundings. This meant fluorescent lighting, small plastic stools and tables crowded together, throw-away chopsticks, transparent pink paper napkins, and flimsy plastic beer cups that dented inward when picked up. Maybe things have changed…

We chose a different way to spend weekend evenings. So began the years of rotating dinner parties in each other’s homes where welcoming friends planned and prepared delicious cuisine, set the table with china plates, linen napkins, and stemmed glassware. Candlelight reigned. It was a cultural lifeline we anticipated, embraced, and shared gratefully.

Bob was a masterful chef and skilled host. He prepared all the food for his wedding to Valerie, and nothing was too finicky for him to try. It was often challenging for any of us to find western food ingredients in the tiny “Mom and Pop” grocery stores in our neighborhood, but Bob did. Dinner parties were events to anticipate and enjoy.

Alec and his wife, Charlene, are overseas friends we have stayed in contact with since the Taipei days. As are Maddy and Cabby. With Valerie and Bob, they rounded out some of our weekend dinner friends.

The six of us arrived one evening at Bob and Valerie’s apartment, with the usual gracious welcome and pouring of wine all around as a pre-dinner warm up. There was the quintessential appetizer that Bob almost always served, but no one ever ate. Small, dark-colored oysters from a tin, covered in a sheen of oil, with tiny crackers on the side. He was the only host who intuitively knew not to tantalize guests with a generous platter of hors d’oeuvres to fill up on before moving to the table.

We were ready to eat when it was time to gather table side.

Alec turns on his high energy self in public situations where he does everything faster than anyone else in the room: walking, eating, drinking, talking, and joking around. In the past, this created consequences like falling objects, breaking, spilling, and sometimes worse. We grew used to it and love him anyway. That night his quick reactions changed the course of the evening and saved the day.

One of the recipes Bob was known for was Pistachio Chicken Breasts with Herb-Garlic Cheese Filling. It came from The Frog Commissary Cookbook. This dish was a crowd pleaser but it required time consuming preparation. There were no bags of shelled pistachios in Taipei, so eight portions required a lot of hand shelling and chopping. It also involved thinly pounded chicken breasts, stuffed with a portion of herby cheese, coated in flour, egg, and rolled in pistachios. The final steps were to brown it on the stove and finish by baking in the oven. We had enjoyed it more than once in their home.

The main course was plated in the kitchen and served to each guest. Alec, whose metabolism and hunger were always on overdrive, dove right into his first bite while the rest of us were talking and sipping wine. In a split second, before anyone else touched a knife and fork, he leapt to his feet, picked up two plates, and ran to the kitchen. Without explanation, he cleared every plate from the table while we sat in confused wonderment.

Bob followed him. We waited for a verdict. The chicken was raw on the inside. It had been nicely browned, but that was all. We breathed a sigh of relief before laughter erupted all around. Our host apologized profusely. The blunder ran counter to his normally professional preparation which included a detailed explanation of the menu just before it was served. All of which led to unmerciful teasing about trying to poison unsuspecting guests with raw meat and making them wait so long for dinner that the oily oysters started looking edible.

Back into the oven went the chicken. Alec, now well beyond his eating time, began devouring bread from a basket on the table. More wine was poured. Story telling began.

Valerie admitted [confessed] that she still slept with a piece of her baby blanket, now the size of a small, thin handkerchief. She kept it under her pillow where she rubbed it before falling asleep. Other revelations followed including stories of cultural faux pas while living away from home. The laughter was contagious.

There was additional joking and teasing while we waited. Alec finished the bread. Finally, the main course was served. Dessert followed.

In looking back, the highlight was not the mistake of undercooked food, but the laughter and humor that kept us entertained and engaged in story telling until an excellent meal was presented and shared.

Perhaps some of the best-remembered dinner parties are those with a mishap or gaff attached which lends to more vivid recall. But in that moment of camaraderie, and candlelight, and good company around a dining table, I knew that we were part of something special.

M.F.K. Fisher said it first. And best.

“There is a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk.”

Some of life’s best moments of [im]perfection are simply like this. Friendship and food are never about one versus the other. Instead, in the right mix, the communing of friends and the blending of spirits around a dining table in Greece, or on a hillside picnic with roaming water buffalo in Yangmingshan, or around a campfire ring in the Rocky Mountains, or in the Mazama River valley are a perfect ending to any story.

Tennis/Hewitt dining table, Athens, Greece

buffalo meadows, yangmingshan, taipei, taiwan

children and buffalo wandering in meadow before dinner

Pistachio Chicken Breasts with Herb-Garlic Cheese Filling

from The Frog Commissary Cookbook

Herb-Garlic Cheese Filling

8 oz cream cheese, softened
1 tsp minced garlic (or more!)
1 T. minced parsley
1/2 tsp pepper
1-2 T. minced fresh basil or 1/2 tsp dried
1/4 tsp salt

Chicken

8 boneless skinless chicken breast halves
1/2 C. flour combined with 1 tsp each salt & pepper
2 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 C. finely ground pistachio nuts [7 oz. shelled]
1/4 C. clarified butter [we used regular butter]

Filling

Combine the cream cheese with the garlic, herbs, and seasonings. Chill until firm and then form into 8 2″ long cylinders. Keep refrigerated until ready to use.

Chicken

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Gently pound chicken breasts between wax paper until 1/4″ thick. For each portion, place 1 portion of the filling along 1 edge of a pounded chicken breast and fold and roll the chicken over the filling to completely and securely enclose it. Repeat with each piece of chicken. Roll each piece sequentially in the seasoned flour, the beaten eggs, and finally the ground pistachios. Sauté in butter over medium heat for 1-2 minutes on each side or until lightly browned. Transfer chicken to a baking pan and put in the oven for 15-20 minutes. Serve hot. Makes 8 portions.

Other overseas adventures with Alec and Charlene, Maddy and Cabby, found here :

July 4 in 2024

July 11, 2024September 6, 2024 / wendyulfers / 7 Comments

I spent the 248^th anniversary of our country’s declaration of independence in 1776 in Washington, DC. Because we were married in the bicentennial year of 1976, I add 200 years to our anniversary as a reminder of the creation of democracy in the United States. In the scope of time and human existence, our form of government is very young.

We were invited to watch the July 4th fireworks from an 11^th floor rooftop on Pennsylvania Avenue. Heavy rains in the afternoon and evening ended before dark. The nighttime air was warm and humid as we climbed the stairs and took our viewing positions.

Rapid bursts of cascading fireworks left thick clouds of lingering smoke which partially obscured our view, but overall it was a fine holiday display. Being in Washington, DC in July makes me feel patriotic and thoughtful about our democratic history.

American liberties were hard fought and hard won more than 200 years ago. Our Federalist form of government was founded on commonly held ideas; the rule of law, separation of powers, checks and balances, respect for human rights, free and fair elections, and peaceful transitions of power. These principles are unique to our democracy. They are meant to hold us together as a nation.

Democratic values are born and reborn in stormy arguments and turbulent debate. They are fragile to sustain. Every day we see and read about conflict and political discord fueled by a continuous barrage of media that is difficult to tune out. Facts are often shrouded in misinformation.

Democracy works but it is “We, the People” who work it. In return for living in freedom we give back our thoughtful intelligence, critical thinking, and vital participation in the form of voting.

The flash, noise, and smoke on Independence Day were a visual reminder that we are living in a period of political heat and turmoil. There is daily drama amid verbal fireworks. Clouds of doubt form when truth is disregarded or cast aside. In a few months, after a presidential election, it will be seen whether smoke obscures our democracy or begins to dissipate.

Right now, it feels like being in the midst of dark skies and cascading fire power which briefly lit the Washington Memorial and the National Mall with explosive booms, riotous colors, and lingering smoke on July 4, 2024.

finale of July 4, 2024

Carla’s Dogs

March 23, 2024July 29, 2026 / wendyulfers / 6 Comments

Once, I was attacked by two pit bulls. The result was stitches and bruises. I’m not afraid of dogs. But I don’t love them unconditionally. And yet I know that dogs can be healers. Even abused and abandoned ones. My overseas friend, Carla Walker, proved this.

CARLA’S BEGINNINGS

Carla Gimbl was born in Germany, one year before the end of World War Two. She adored her Hungarian father who was seventeen years older than her German mother. Also in the home was an attentive but strong-willed grandmother who taught her the art and joy of cooking. Carla takes after her grandmother’s dominating spirit and cooking expertise.

Until she was eight-years-old, Carla lived across the street from where the Nuremburg war trials were held. There were no other children nearby to play with. But, always, there were dogs—a beloved Airedale Terrier, or German Shepherds. They became her playmates and friends. She dreamed of owning a large property one day where she could live with dogs.

Tragedy struck on a foggy morning when her parents’ car collided head-on with a truck. Father was killed instantly and mother, although injured, survived. Carla wasn’t told of her father’s death until months later. It was her first experience with abandonment and loss.

Then her mother married a wealthy European businessman. While their life style improved, Carla’s stepfather was indifferent and abusive. At fourteen, she ran away from home and lived on the streets until authorities sent her to juvenile reform school for two years. When her parents were finally contacted to take her home, Carla’s mother arrived in a fur coat, fully embracing a life of luxury, looked at the girl and said, “That is not my daughter. I have no daughter.” More loss and abandonment. Carla never forgave her mother, and she never looked back. She was on her own.

In the early 1960s, still in Germany and working in a bar, Carla met 22-year-old Charles Walker, a U.S. Air Force policeman. She married him at nineteen. When they returned to the United States, the couple stayed with the extended Walker family in southern Georgia. Later, Carla lived in Las Vegas while Charles was stationed in Vietnam. Those were the wild partying years.

Then more tragedy.

Charles, a serial womanizer throughout the marriage, pushed Carla down a flight of stairs in her sixth month of pregnancy. She gave birth to a daughter, prematurely, who did not survive. This loss was a turning point for Carla. She was finished with people. She had experienced only disappointment and hurt from those closest to her.

By her own admission, Carla feels a strong bond with dogs, particularly stray dogs, as she sees the parallel between homeless animals and her own life. Living on the streets, abandoned, and surviving by resilience and grit. After her infant daughter died, she buckled down in fierce independence to live without asking for help or depending on anyone.

Carla filed for divorce after moving to Greece with Charles when he was stationed at the Air Force base in Athens. She left with only the clothes on her back, but supported herself with various jobs over the next decades. It wasn’t easy, but she worked as a bar maid paid on commission for drinks sold, cleaned houses for foreigners, babysat children. Her best paying job was with a large pharmaceutical company where she planned, shopped, cooked, and served food for all of their events and parties. The company eventually moved its base to Dubai. Carla was paid a large separation package, and then spent it all.

When the American military base closed in Athens in 1988, the stray dog problem in Greece began. As families left the country, dogs were abandoned on the airport tarmac. Carla found them wandering around loose and starving. She started bringing them home. The first rescued dogs were adopted by families in Europe.

In the early 2000s, Carla began her business of boarding dogs. She moved to the rural outskirts of Athens where she rented a property with land and outbuildings. She had kennels built to her specifications in a former horse stable. She took in dogs while their owners travelled, and they went home happy. Her reputation spread. People brought her strays or dogs whose owners had died. She was alone, without people in her life, but happily living with her four-legged friends.

early advertisement for boarding with the dog lady

CARLA AND CABBY BEGINNINGS

I have known Cabby Tennis and his wife Maddy Hewitt for more than 30 years. We first became friends in Taipei, Taiwan with overseas school jobs and young families at Taipei American School. Cabby and Maddy are dog people. Now they live in Athens, Greece, travel often, but cannot always take their pet.

In 2019, after some unfortunate boarding experiences with their German short-haired pointer, Chop, a colleague of Maddy’s mentioned that a woman named Carla Walker operated a dog kennel outside the village of Markopoulo. Cabby took Chop out to the countryside to meet Carla. As they talked, Chop sat at Cabby’s feet in front of Carla. She stroked his ears. He closed his eyes and leaned into her. The connection was made. Chop’s first boarding at the dog kingdom equaled happy dog and happy owner.

Soon after, Carla told Cabby she had to close her business as the owner was selling the property with all the kennel infrastructure she had built into it. Luckily, she found an abandoned house for rent nearby. It had a large yard, wide-open views, and an orchard of olive trees. The grove was overgrown, the house vacant and stripped of everything by squatters and gypsies. It was literally four walls and a leaky roof.

Cabby, not about to walk away from the best boarding experience for Chop, insisted that together he and Carla could refurbish the house and property for her menagerie, which then numbered over twenty dogs. And so, a working partnership between two dog lovers began.

With Cabby’s intrepid can-do spirit, he and Carla [and Chop] worked for months installing plumbing, appliances and fixtures, doors, windows, and repairing the roof. They built fences and gates for the dog yard and orchard and established a garden area.

cabby, poppy, and romeo working inside the orchard

suzie and the wheelbarrow on the other side

In 2020, Carla moved her furnishings and the dogs to “The View House” as she aptly named it. The collaboration between Cabby and Carla continued. They worked side by side with her tools [she taught him how to weld] and his heavy lifting to continue making improvements on the house and land. Of course, the work is ongoing and there is more to be done.*

the view house with [fence jumping] Rudi on his rounds

CARLA’S ABSOLUTES

Every animal whisperer is made of something the rest of us don’t really understand. Carla’s complete focus is on the dogs rather than herself. She is alert, attentive, and vigilant to their individual needs. The love between animal and human goes both ways.

There is knowledge behind her diligence and devotion. While living in the U.S., Carla studied Dog Psychology and Canine Nutrition for three years. Each animal receives one-on-one time. They seek her out for attention, taking turns, and reflecting adoration back on their caregiver.

All of this comes from a well-honed formula Carla calls her Absolutes with Dogs. They must unfold in a precise order: 1. Rules established. 2. Discipline. 3. Respect for her and each other. After this, love comes automatically.

CARLA AND CABBY COLLABORATION

These two remarkable people are as different as they are alike. Carla is tiny and petite. She is playful and feisty and readily shares strong opinions. Cabby is a very tall athletic-framed man with a calm, reassuring demeanor. Seeing them stand next to each other is a contrast of proportions.

Carla has smoked since childhood and has the husky voice of a long ingrained habit. Her laugh is deep, resonant, and engaging. Cabby has continued to work out and row competitively since his university crewing years. His wide smile surfaces easily, especially when telling a story, which he does often and well. The circumstances under which Carla and Cabby grew up could not be more different–an abandoned street urchin in Germany versus a loving two parent, four child household in America.

Their similarities are notable, too. Carla and Cabby each possess a steely strength of character and self-assurance that runs to their core. They share a strong work ethic that brings joy and a keen sense of accomplishment with every task undertaken. They are head-over-heels for anything “dog oriented”. When Chop died of old age, Cabby commissioned a commemorative headstone and installed it in the orchard among the olive trees and poppies.

Relationships between people are not as easily defined as those between Carla and her dogs. By the time she turned 80 in February of this year, Carla lived many decades making independent decisions, getting things done on her own and in her own way without consulting anyone. Cabby, whom I have written about in other stories, is a Renaissance man with a multitude of gifts and talents. He can, and does, accomplish anything he undertakes as a project worth doing. He has a bottomless reservoir for giving time to others. People are drawn to his honest, ready assistance and hands-on approach.

Jumping in to help Carla set up and move into the View House is completely within Cabby’s character. But he was caught off guard by how this affected Carla’s independence and wariness in engaging with, or trusting, another person. He simply acts on what he thinks…let’s fix this. Then pitches right in.

Thankfully, for Carla, this was a karmic blessing of the right timing with the right person in the right place.

Four years later, Carla and Cabby continue to work toward the goal of creating the very best dog kingdom in Greece. They have overcome challenges and resolved friction about how to accomplish things. Two individuals with their own opinions have learned to listen with patience and compassion.

I asked Carla and Cabby, separately, what has changed during their working friendship. Carla said that Cabby has become like a soul mate. He opened her to the realization that not all people with whom you grow close are going to hurt you or let you down. “Cabby has very good energy. He told me when he wakes up in the morning, he says to himself, ‘I’m going to be happy today.’” When he goes home at the end of a “Carla work day”, she often feels the positive energy leaving with him. She is not wired to wake up with optimism but she responds to it through Cabby.

Cabby, a man motivated by his “can-do” ethic, admits to developing humility from working with Carla. He takes time to listen and learn the back story behind Carla’s decisions. He respects her skill sets and holds back until there is agreement on what project to tackle next.

All of this has led to the best outcome for Carla and the dogs. She feels validated and loved in her relationship with both Cabby and Maddy. There is mutual respect. And there is true, deep, loving friendship. As Carla told me, “Cabby has made me softer. He was God’s gift when I was in a difficult situation.”

Dogs are Carla’s mission in life, her reason for being, and her touchstone to her own humanity. She has created a place of reciprocal need and love while living the life she envisioned as a child with a house and land for her animals.

From their first encounter, as Chop leaned into Carla’s soothing touch, it was clear to Cabby that this is a woman who lives life in joyful, meaningful work, founded on ability, confidence, and complete devotion to nurturing animals. Adding his labor and caretaking into the mix, Cabby mirrors back the importance, value, and beauty Carla brings, what they both bring…all for the love of dogs.

*ADDENDUM: Work Still To Be Accomplished

Carla is ready to take on next steps. She is not actively acquiring new strays or young dogs to raise, but currently has 19 animals depending on her care. She is eager to reopen another dog pension for financial reasons. The installation of sturdy, protected, outdoor kennels is a large project requiring funding for materials and labor.

If you love dogs, or other people who love dogs, or a good human interest story, there is a way to help with restarting Carla’s Happy Dog Pension. Consider the gift of a donation in the form of a one time sum or ongoing annual sponsorship for a few years. All funds are designated for kennel construction and maintenance, supporting dogs with food, flea/tick collars for the tribe, spaying, neutering, and other veterinary care health needs.

In the U.S., a Venmo account entitled Cabby Tennis @Dog-Kingdom has been set up for Carla and the dogs. If you contribute this way, please include your name and email address in the notes. Information will be kept confidential, but we would like to be able to thank you personally.

It is also possible to contribute directly to the Dog Kingdom bank account in Athens, Greece. For transfer information into the Euro account, contact Cabby cmdkwalker46@gmail.com or Wendy windowtoalifeoverseas@gmail.com.

If writing a check is your preferred method, contact Wendy and the Venmo deposit will be made for you.

No donation is too small. Any and all financial gifts will help Carla’s Dog Kingdom grow into the future…

FUN PHOTO GALLERY

Click the link for the projects accomplished (with donations) in Carla’s Dog Kingdom over the past year.

Update On Carla’s Dogs, One Year Later

Can’t We All Just Get Along

November 10, 2023July 19, 2026 / wendyulfers / 16 Comments

The essential moral skill is being considerate to others in the complexity of everyday life. Morality is about how we interact with each other minute by minute. The wise person’s essential gift is tender receptivity. –Iris Murdoch, British writer and philosopher

Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. –James Madison, American stateman, Founding Father, fourth President of the United States

In the current state of incivility between nations, religions, politics, and sometimes within family lines, when the argument of “us vs. them” feels overwhelming, I think about Count Alexander Rostov, the protagonist in Amor Towles’ best-selling novel, A Gentleman in Moscow. The story begins during the years after the first Russian Revolution, the assassination of the last Czar and his family, and World War 1. The Bolsheviks are firmly in power.

Count Rostov, born an aristocrat, was tried in a Bolshevik tribunal court in 1922 when he was 32-years-old. He was found guilty of being a gentleman of leisure and privilege and of allegedly writing a poem nine years earlier now deemed anti-revolutionary. He was sentenced to turn over his wealth, his personal property, and the luxurious suite where he resided in the Metropol Hotel, near the Kremlin, in Moscow’s Theater Square. Forcibly relocated to one tiny room, a former servant’s quarters in the hotel attic, the final provision was that he would be shot on site if caught outside the hotel premises. House arrest for life.

Rostov settled into meager quarters with few of his inherited possessions. He found the space depressingly confining, hitting his head on the sloping eaves, squeezing his tall body between his father’s large Louis XVI desk and the bed on creaking springs. To ease the cramped conditions, he secretly knocked out the back wall of the built-in wardrobe which connected to another tiny room. He made this into a study, furnished with a bookcase, lamp, two chairs, and his grandmother’s coffee table retrieved from storage, thus doubling his livable space. He remained there for the next 32 years.

Early adjustments were difficult. Rostov’s daily routines were confined to the hotel lobby, barber shop, tailor shop, two restaurants–the formal Boyarsky on the second floor and the less formal Piazza on the ground floor, a bar, and his own 6^th floor digs. In the fourth year of confinement, he contemplated suicide by climbing to the hotel roof at midnight one night in order to throw himself off, but was stopped by an unexpected conversation with a hotel caretaker he had previously befriended.

the ground floor restaurant which the Count referred to as the Piazza

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. –Viktor Frankl, Auschwitz survivor

But freedom of will has been a well-established tenet of moral philosophy since the time of the Greeks. –Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

Rostov made a decisive shift in order to survive the next three decades of house exile. Instead of succumbing to bitterness with the loss of money, social position and possessions, he chose free will, his own intelligence, and the resilience of the human spirit to move forward, and live.

He took a job as the head waiter in the formal Boyarsky restaurant because, as a gentleman, he knew good food and wine and how to serve both properly. He forged deep, sustainable relationships with the hotel staff–first as a live-in guest, then as a colleague, confidante, and finally as a friend. He conversed at length with international guests, had a longterm romantic relationship with a Russian actress in frequent residence, befriended a child who lived in the Metropol and showed him hidden spaces with her master key. Later, she returned as a young woman and abandoned her five-year-old daughter, Sophia, to Rostov’s care. He shared his limited space, raised the girl to young adulthood, and learned paternal love. He tutored a Party Member, formerly an officer of the Red Army, who was partially responsible for his fate. For many years they met monthly for dinner and conversation about being a gentleman, learning to speak French and English, understanding the ways of western culture by watching American movies.

Rostov accomplished all of this by treating everyone with equal parts civility, respect, and kindness. He observed human nature by foregoing judgement. Interacting with individuals from every station and age in life with the same courteous manner, the Count matured in self-awareness, humility, and understanding.

Alexander Rostov’s story, before and after exile, is rich in complexity and detail during a turbulent political time in Russian history. A well-crafted, but nail-biting escape awaits in the end. Yet the heart of Rostov’s life under house arrest is that civility, or courtesy, has nothing to do with one’s social class, clothing, or bank balance. Rather, civility is a moral choice, and along with graciousness is the kind of practice that never goes out of style. Count Rostov is one of the most endearing literary examples.

The Count took pride in wearing a well-tailored jacket, but he took greater pride in knowing that a gentleman’s presence was best announced by his bearing, his remarks and his manner. Not by the cut of his coat. –Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

Rostov’s gentlemanly qualities, the humanity, love, and respect he gained in return, illustrates that there are high rewards when civility prevails. As individuals, we can’t fix the world’s overwhelming problems of wars between nations, historic hatred between factions, partisan divides. Still, bridging the gap from Rostov’s choices to the philosophy of Joseph Campbell which says there is something we can control.

When we talk about settling the world’s problems, we’re barking up the wrong tree. The world is perfect. It’s a mess. It has always been a mess. We are not going to change it. Our job is to straighten out our own lives. –Joseph Campbell, mythologist, writer, lecturer [1904-1987]

In 1595, French Jesuits composed 110 Rules of Civility. George Washington is known to have copied them into his school notebook by the time he was 16 years old, more than two centuries later. He titled them, “The Young George Washington’s Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation”, and they were formative in the development of his character. A system of courtesy and respectful behavior appropriate in the company of individuals was later expanded to a nation when he became President. A man of that time wrote this about Washington, “…no wonder every body honored him who honored everybody.”

The first and last of 110 Rules of Civility:

Every action done in company ought to be with some sign of respect to those that are present.

110. Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.

One final story. When our son, Adam, was four-years-old, we were at Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri with 16 extended family members together in a big house for a reunion weekend. Two of his cousins, brothers, then four and six years old, were rolling around on the floor aggressively punching, kicking, and yelling as young boys or puppy dogs are apt to do. Adam, after watching the ruckus on the sidelines, finally approached, and standing directly over them asked, “Can’t we all try to get along here?”

To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order. To put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order. To put the family in order, we must cultivate our personal life; and to cultivate our personal life, we must first set our hearts right.

–Confucius [551-479 BC]

Paul to the Corinthians:

For our boast is this; the testimony of our conscience, that we have behaved in the world to be decent.

Books by Amor Towles:

Rules of Civility 2011

A Gentleman in Moscow 2016

The Lincoln Highway 2021

Searching For Poppies

August 7, 2023April 25, 2026 / wendyulfers / 7 Comments

Visiting an overseas friend who lives in Luxembourg, I found a book of poetry by Mary Oliver on a table in the living room. Awake early the first morning with jet lag, I settled into a comfy chair with a cup of coffee and thumbed through poems in the dim light. One entitled “Poppies” provided pause.

Oliver is known for connecting life lessons to her observations of love for the natural world. In “Poppies” her poetic sentiment contrasts the transient beauty of wild poppy fields with the inevitability of life and death.

“There isn’t a place in this world that doesn’t sooner or later drown in the indigos of darkness.”

To lighten the mood, she weaves in a moment of pure joy while visualizing poppies in the field.

“…But also I say this: that light is an invitation to happiness, and that happiness, when it’s done right, is a kind of holiness, palpable and redemptive. Inside the bright fields, touched by their rough and spongy gold, I am washed and washed in the river of earthy delight…”

While immersed in her river of delight, she circles back to darkness and loss, ending with a question.

“…and what are you going to do–what can you do about it–deep, blue night?”

Of course, there is nothing to do other than letting go. Thus, exemplifying one of Buddha’s teachings that there is nothing anyone can successfully cling to in between the moment of conception and the moment of death.

Poppies became my favorite flower when we lived on the island of Cyprus for three years. Every spring, deep red fields of poppy flowers bloomed in profusion all over grassy orchards, fields, and pastures. Shaped like a fine teacup, the crepe-paper-thin petals flutter freely in the breeze. En masse on a roadside or in a field or even in a small clump, they are spectacular. But poppy season is brief. Flowers wilt, fade, and fall to the earth as graying-red dust in a short time. Breathtaking in the moment and then gone. Another year passes.

Our children were young in those years. On weekends we drove out of Nicosia searching for a carpet of red and green to spread out our blanket and picnic. Spending an afternoon in a wild field of flowers and tall grasses is still a magical memory. It was stunningly beautiful, a family outing in the season of rejuvenation, and it made me happy to be there with loved ones.

During World War 1, [1914-1918], most of the fighting in Europe took place in open fields where poppies proliferated despite the death and mayhem all around. In 1915, Lt. Colonel John McCrae wrote his famous, historic poem, “In Flanders Fields”* after witnessing the returning spring bloom across red battlefields.

*Full poem at the end of story.

Since then, poppies have been a symbol connecting the blood and sacrifice of soldiers with remembrance, hope, and peace. They are also associated with the Greek God Morpheus–the god of sleep and dreams. Morphine and opium narcotics are derived from poppies, hence the reference to death and sleep.

What draws me to relish a profusion of blooming poppy fields whenever possible? Because, like Mary Oliver, I connect them to a personal lesson. They remind me of the nature of our own family’s life cycle. Beauty in learning and growth, and the eventual letting go as necessitated by time.

There was uncertainty and risk taken by our young family of four when we made a decision to live and work overseas in the late 1980s. In geographies and life styles, that were not a reflection of our home culture, we adapted and grew in individual ways. Incorporating the very best of each country’s experience added significantly to our lives.

Now we are all back living full time in America. Our children are young adults with children of their own. They each have their own perspectives about growing up in other countries for thirteen and sixteen of their formative years. My hope is that it enhanced and deepened their awareness as global citizens, as more thoughtful inhabitants to contributing to the health of the world and our planet for their own children’s future.

I think about these things along with the light and dark life cycle of the seasonal poppy. The lightness, the brightness, the earthly delight when seeing them massed in peak glory. The dark side of “here and now” beauty is knowing that it is fleeting. It will leave. Which must occur in order to be ready for the next opportunity to grow.

This past spring, the seasonal return of poppies in the wild offered an opportunity to re-experience an assault of red on the senses. We were in Greece in April. Poppy season was on, but had passed its peak in Athens. Then we traveled to the island of Hydra. Asking others to be on the lookout, someone said they saw “a whole field of poppies in bloom” on a hike.

It wasn’t exactly like that. What we found was a roadside of brilliant red flowers crowning a cliff high above the Mediterranean Sea, still lacy and vibrant and swaying in the breeze. It was a sought-after reminiscence, perfect for the moment, the contrasting beauty of vibrant red petals and deep blue sea.

…and it was enough, before moving on down the path.

We live in a world where people think happiness is a condition, but it’s not; it’s a sensation. It’s momentary. –Fran Lebowitz

This existence of ours is as transient as clouds. A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky, rushing by, like a torrent down a steep mountain. –Buddha

You can’t say I’m not happy ‘cause happy’s not an action, you just feel that way.
–Ambersunshower, from the song, ‘Walter T’, 1996 [Available only on YouTube.com]

POPPIES    by Mary Oliver

The poppies send up their
orange flares; swaying
in the wind, their congregations
are a levitation

of bright dust, of thin
and lacy leaves.
There isn’t a place
In this world that doesn’t 

Sooner or later drown
In the indigos of darkness, 
but now, for a while,
the roughage

shines like a miracle 
as it floats above everything
with its yellow hair.
Of course, nothing stops the cold

black, curved blade
from hooking forward–-
of course
loss is the great lesson.

But I also say this: that light
Is an invitation 
to happiness,
and that happiness,

when it is done right,
is a kind of holiness,
palpable and redemptive.
Inside the bright fields,

touched by their rough and spongy gold,
I am washed and washed
In the river of delight––

and what are you going to do––
what can you do
about it––
deep, blue night?

IN FLANDERS FIELDS by John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie,

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

poppies sown in Colorado fields, courtesy of Harrington’s ranch

a different kind of poppy, Poppy Tennis-Hewitt

Leila Finds Her Way

April 2, 2023July 5, 2026 / wendyulfers / 12 Comments

The screen saver on my computer is a continually revolving door of the pictures in my digital photo library. Sometimes an image arises and pulls me into such strong “déjà vu” moment that I am carried back to that exact place and time. A photo from several years ago opened on the screen recently. I paused, after it flashed by, to reflect on the moment a very young child learned to adapt to uncertainty with resilience and her own brand of spunk.

We were living in Paris, France when our granddaughter, Leila, who had just turned one-year-old, was left in our care for a four-day weekend. Our son and daughter-in-law, who met and fell in love in London, were attending the wedding of close friends there.

Leila was an active, walking toddler with strong attachments to her parents, particularly her mother. She had never been in the care of a babysitter or day care since her birth in California in 2016. Although we were living overseas at the time she was born, we had been together many times in both the U.S. and France. But she was a baby. And we were not her parents.

Anticipating separation anxiety even in the care of loving grandparents, I had suggested [several times] that the parents try some outside babysitting with other caregivers before leaving her with us in an unfamiliar environment in Paris. Well…

Our son flew directly to London on business before pleasure. Daughter-in-law and Leila flew to Paris first and were embraced by my husband and me in our Parisian apartment. Mother and daughter settled easily into the guest suite, and we spent a fine two days establishing routines and exploring the neighborhood. Then, early on the third morning, Mama left to catch a train to the UK. Seeing her mother descend on the elevator with a suitcase, life shifted dramatically in Leila’s experience.

This little girl cried herself into a state of exhaustion that resulted in an unusual morning nap. When she awoke, still inconsolable, it was time to mix things up. I called in reinforcements. My friend, Sally, came over. We went to a nearby park with a large sandpit playground. Sally and I watched Leila explore the play equipment, get dirty with digging toys, and sit with independently playing French children. Sad eyes throughout, but no tears. Home to lunch, an early bath, and second nap ending in the late afternoon.

Then an epiphany.

Hearing that she was awake, I went to the bedroom. Leila was sitting up, wearing an uncertain face, as she watched me open the door. It seemed another round of tears was about to begin.

And then something happened that I will never forget. While I spoke to her quietly, Leila looked at me, still in the doorway, closed her eyes and visibly shook herself. From head to toe. As if, by shaking, she was able to transport herself to a new place. As if, intuitively, saying, “I will shift gears. Right now.” In the eight hours since her mother left, an emotional switch turned. She emerged from complete misery to a different way of seeing things.

Leila reached out her arms to me. And I witnessed true grit in a little girl who visibly changed her perspective because she needed to, and then wanted to. Yes, adaptability is a trait in tiny people, too.

The next three days unfolded seamlessly. The daily park adventure was an anticipated and engaging outing. At home, we watched my revolving computer photos and talked about the people she recognized. Mommy and Daddy, Donk and DeeDee [Mark and me], herself as a younger baby. She imitated my yoga moves. We danced.

There were sweet moments of playtime in the bathtub, bedtime songs and stories, and hiding in the dining room curtains in a funny game of hide and seek with Leila certain that she was invisible. There were trips to the toy store and stops for coffee and snacks at our market street café. At a sidewalk table we watched the world go by and then explored the pedestrian street.

By the time Leila’s parents returned, a life lesson in trust and love and flexibility had been established. She was fine. We were fine. Back on the scene, witnessing their daughter’s smile and welcoming hugs, the parents were fine, too.

Adaptability is a step above resilience in human temperament. It takes behavioral and emotional coping skills to adjust to new circumstances. In the ever-changing situations of life, learning to adapt as quickly as possible, ideally with support from others, is vital developmental know-how. Leila hit the first mile marker.

As the saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child. Grandparents and grandchildren each need to find a way to create and live in their own special harmony. Young children can, and do, adapt when facing new or unfamiliar situations. But they need to figure things out in their own way and time. Successfully overcoming challenges, particularly at a young age, lays the groundwork for all that lies ahead in life.

When I see a photo of that memorable visit flash by on the computer screen, I relive the story of a beloved granddaughter who found the ability, within herself, to emotionally change at a tender age. In doing so, she grew. And thrived.

It happened right before my eyes. Simply unforgettable.

still friends at 18 months in California

Being Jane Filer

November 27, 2022February 24, 2025 / wendyulfers / 13 Comments

The fact that I, myself, do not understand what my paintings mean while I am painting them does not imply that they are meaningless. –Salvador Dalí, Spanish surrealist artist

Years ago, a man named John Filer, found this quote by Dalí, and taped it to his wife’s easel because it reminded him of her work. His wife, Jane Filer, is an artist. She has been expressing herself through painting since she was a small child. In Kindergarten, Jane went to the standing easel during free time and painted a new picture every day the entire school year.

Today, Jane’s acrylic-on-canvas paintings carry the ethereal quality of an imaginative dream. Among overlaying colors, images materialize and hold one’s gaze. It’s impossible not to feel something and find meaning.

I wasn’t aware of Jane Filer or anything about her portfolio until I visited a friend in Boulder, Colorado more than a year ago. In her living room, there was a painting over the sofa that pulled me closer. It felt like looking into someone’s multi-layered dream. Even one of my own dreams. I wanted to know more. My friend, Cathy, told me it was painted by a woman named Jane Filer. She bought it from a gallery on Canyon Road in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Cathy’s painting, *High Tide, Full Moon* by Jane Filer 2015

My husband and I were already planning a road trip to New Mexico the upcoming weekend. Good road trips offer new discoveries and lasting memories. What I didn’t expect as an outcome was friendship with an artist whose work I greatly admire.

Jane Filer was the middle child of four siblings–two older brothers, two younger sisters. Born on the coast of California, her accountant father moved the family to Australia for several years when she was 11. While living there, Jane gained appreciation for and inspiration from aboriginal art–particularly the strong colors and detailed, organic nature of the paintings.

As a child, Jane’s mother told her she had an “overactive imagination”. It was not meant as a compliment. Rather, Jane was endlessly criticized and berated as a “disappointment” for not being practical enough. She turned her creative energies and vivid imagination toward her younger sisters, making up stories and songs to entertain them. Eventually she was nurtured by a paternal aunt. Drawing came naturally before Jane entered school. And then she discovered the magic of a paint brush in her hand.

Before we drove to Santa Fe, I called Bill Hester, Jane’s art dealer at the time. We were coming to look at everything he had of her work. Bill spent a lot of time with us as we strolled the gallery, asking good questions, explaining Jane’s painting method along with his personal view on poetry, metaphor, and art.

My husband and I considered each painting individually and then circled back to speak together privately. One piece resonated with both of us. It was entitled Elephant’s Journey and reminded us of our years living overseas and the adventures we experienced as a family, in five countries for more than thirty years. Elephant’s Journey touched a mutual chord. The elephants are marching in line toward a cliff, but it is not catastrophic. We saw it as the poem for a risk we chose to live.

*Elephant’s Journey*, with closeup of elephants walking, Jane Filer, 2021

Jane’s family returned to the U.S. from Australia and settled in the Midwest. With encouragement from her mentoring aunt, she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Southern Illinois University. After graduating, she met her husband, John Filer, who was five years older and worked in forestry. For many years, while John planted trees all over America, they travelled and lived simply in a camping trailer with national and state forests as their backyard.

At the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Jane was offered a coveted spot in the art college, working toward her Master of Fine Arts. She began teaching painting and drawing for the next 21 years. In 1986, John and Jane bought 17 acres of woods and began to build their first real home. Much of the construction was accomplished by their own creative hands.

As she was about to turn 50, Jane left teaching, which she dearly loved, to devote herself full-time to painting. John, now retired from forestry, became her manager, counselor, and confidence builder. When Jane expressed self-doubt or struggled with difficult decisions, John would simply look at her and say, “Why are you asking me? You don’t need anyone’s advice. You’re Jane Filer!”

Ten years ago, Jane’s selling gallery expanded from Chapel Hill to Santa Fe, which is, the second largest art market in the world after New York City.

Six months after purchasing Elephant’s Journey, I returned to Santa Fe to view another Filer painting I had seen on the gallery’s website. But I was immediately distracted by a larger piece that had just arrived from Jane’s North Carolina studio the day before. Unwrapped, on the floor, it was leaning against the wall. I studied it silently and knew I could look at this painting every day for the rest of my life. It is called Eclipse.

There are figures falling out of the sky, there are swimming figures, there is a grove of trees whose roots feed an underground river, with a tent and a lone camper above. There is water running through it and a full regatta of sailboats off on one side. The colors blend into a beautiful meditation even without the imagery. When I look at this painting, I continue to discover something new. It joined Elephant’s Journey in our living room.

Jane Filer is a happy-by-nature-extrovert with a warm, engaging smile, a tumble of spiraling blond curls, and twinkling blue eyes. I met her in person on my next visit to Santa Fe where she was painting for two weeks as “artist in residence” at the Hester gallery. Jane is an open communicator who simply loves people. Even people she meets for the first time.

I am fascinated with life, light, love, and fear. –Jane Filer

We fell into conversation easily, starting with the psychology of being an artist. Jane told me that being off balance and a bit fearful is critical to her paintings. Dark and light, yin and yang are expressed in metaphoric imagery. She doesn’t explain what the imagery means. She doesn’t like repetition, but certain themes recur. Her connection with Nature in the form of animals, faces, figures, water, flowers, trees, are part of the story on canvas. There is often architecture, discernable buildings or shelters painted in, too. Because Jane considers art her therapy as well as a way of life, she is fearless about entering what she calls her dark side. She believes painting fills a need to dig deeply into life’s challenges and, by doing so, keeps her healthy.

After the Santa Fe meeting, we continued talking over the phone. Then Jane invited me to visit her studio/home in the woods of North Carolina. John Filer passed away prematurely several years ago. After he died, she hired the finishing work on the house to her specifications. I found everything about it to be an extension of her naturalness, her love of nature, and living close to the earth.

The first thing I noticed were collections everywhere. Rocks and geodes, jars and bottles, shells and bones, antique Indian artifacts–axe heads and arrowheads. There are faces that Jane has collected, sculpted, or painted. The furniture invites curling up to talk or muse on the green expanse of forest outside or to sit by the wood burning stove inside. The kitchen was one of my favorite indoor spaces. John built the wooden dish rack above an antique cast iron sink he found in the woods. It’s an efficient way to dry and store hand washed dishes. Jane designed the tile back drop over the stove and sink. The L-shaped counter invites sitting over morning coffee, talking to whoever is cooking, or sipping single malt whisky and more conversation in late afternoon. There are vignettes of photos, paintings, and artifacts tucked into wall niches or on windowsills.

hanging dish rack by John, inlaid tile work by Jane

wall niche collectibles, John and Jane Filer photo by Lorri Zipperer

I can’t write songs and I can’t write stories, but I can paint. –Jane Filer

Observing an artist in their studio space is definitely zeroing in on their personal reality. Because Jane told me she dreams and/or has visions while she works, I assumed that, like writers, her working time is largely introspective, solitary, and quiet. In fact, life in the Filer studio can be just the opposite. There might be loud music and singing, phone calls and conversations. There is another artist, Michele Yellin, who paints with her, their easels set side by side. When I tried to retreat to my room to give her time to work, Jane invited me into the studio to talk while she painted. As I poked around looking at artifacts that caught my eye and asking questions, she transferred color, imagery, and texture to the canvas. Jane multi-tasks and dreams while awake.

Jane in the studio working on what will become *Three Dogs*, 2022

We dream all day long. –Jane Filer

To begin a new piece, Jane sits at her easel thinking quietly before reaching for paint and covering the canvas edge to edge in colors. She moves color around abstractly until layers and shapes suggest composition. It is free-falling. When patterns and colors start to feel exciting, she sketches over the abstract with fine charcoal lines. A language is developing, the beginning of a story emerges in her mind. She feels anticipation and energy about what comes next.

the abstract beginning, color everywhere

The next phase, moving from the abstract to the middle composition, is what Jane calls “The Hairy Middle”. It is the longest part of her painting method and often uncomfortable. Because in the “hairy part” she does a deep dive, directly facing what she likes and dislikes, and more importantly what she fears. There is collective unconscious to whatever bubbles up in this middle moment. The painting has become its own entity. Jane moves it further into existence by working through her emotions until she is on the other side. Her imagination stretches to completion, heads to an ending.

Jane can work on more than one painting at a time. She sets aside something that needs time to mature and starts a new canvas or goes back to an earlier one. She adds texture and shape with pieces of bubble wrap or corrugated cardboard, pressing them into paint and then onto the canvas. She might use a knife edge along with brush strokes to create depth. There are finely drawn outlines around imagery. The color palate is vibrant and rich. Yet the finished painting may have morphed numerous times from the original color scheme.

*Lost Lobo* by Jane Filer, 2022
from the abstract to the hairy middle [as seen above] to completion

For art to be complete, it must be let go–sent off into the world. –Jane Filer

Jane considers her paintings to be her offspring. They are born and nurtured on canvas. They are not meant to be literal, but rather offer an invitation to find personal meaning. Intuition tells her when each one is finished. Then she lets it go to stand on its own in the world.

I sent Jane a photo of her two paintings on our living room wall and invited her to come see them in person. Four months later, at the end of October, Jane and her friend, Michele Yellin, drove across the country and made Colorado their first stop.

It snowed all night after they arrived. We woke to a white wonderland in the morning. It didn’t stop us from driving into Rocky Mountain National Park and having lunch at the historic Stanley Hotel.

Jane, Wendy, Michele at Many Parks Curve overlook

The best things in life cannot be told. –Heinrich Zimmer, German linguist and historian

That is to say, it is difficult to describe art that exists outside the reach of words. But this is the very essence of it, too. Art is created to inspire emotions and depth of feeling that are simply beyond description.

I think this is what it means to be in the presence of Filer art. What begins as a dream or vision in Jane’s metaphysical mind, gains momentum in color and imagery on canvas, and opens a poetic portal to both lose and find yourself at the same time.

I am inspired by this circle of connectedness–a painting in another’s living room, an art gallery in Santa Fe, two paintings in our home that enrich us every day, back and forth visits with an artist whose life began as a girl with an overactive imagination and is now my friend.

That’s being Jane Filer.

Hope as a Destination –be sure to read a new story about how a piece of Jane’s art, entitled “Above the Bridge”, inspires hope and encourages ways we can create impact in a tumultuous political climate.

Current information about Jane’s art, both painting and sculpture, can be found on her website janefiler.com

Caught in a Monster Jam

September 12, 2022March 26, 2025 / wendyulfers / 13 Comments

Subcultures are made up of people who share a passion about a specific interest that is often stereotyped. Hippies, bikers, skate boarders, NASCAR racers, bird watchers, body builders, punk rockers, break dancers, to name a few. Recently, I learned about an American subculture that has been around since 1992 but escaped my attention for a couple of reasons–geography and interest.

We were living in Cyprus and Taiwan in the 1990s, and I was involved in learning quirky details about other cultures rather than paying attention to what was going on in my home country. Also, the subculture I recently witnessed in California was about 180 degrees outside of my normal interests. Possibly because it involves five and six-ton vehicles doing impossible tricks–jumping in the air, spinning donuts, flipping over, standing on two wheels, and racing in circles. It is a competitive spectator sport of huge trucks with notorious names and drivers. This is Monster Jam.

While visiting a four-year-old grandson who is obsessed with cars, trucks, and trains–basically anything with rotating wheels, I was notified by his father that we would be attending a Monster Jam rally with the entire family on Sunday afternoon. I watched a YouTube video that told me, “If you don’t know what Monster Jam is, you are a certified city slicker.”

Monster Jam is a live motorsport event under the auspices of U.S. Hot Rod Association, based primarily in North America. The Monster Truck series is the longest running and most successful competition of big trucks in the last 30 years.

Monster Trucks are special off-road vehicles with heavy duty suspension, 4-wheel steering, and oversized tires. The tires are a monstrous 66 inches tall and 43 inches across. Each truck is built like “an engineered fighter jet airplane” but only used for competitive entertainment. They cost $250,000.

The drivers work on teams, performing in seasonal rallies that tour the U.S. with famously known and named vehicles–Grave Digger, Son-uva Digger, Zombie, Whiplash, El Toro Loco, Megalodon, or Jurassic Attack. Currently, there are 14 female Monster Truck drivers in a predominantly male circuit. All driving teams are salaried and receive no prize money.

Monster Jam is one of the safer driving sports. Drivers are protected from head to toe in custom-made fire-resistant suits, helmets, and gloves. They are completely strapped in with head, neck, and body support. When a truck flips upside down or catches fire, most drivers walk away unscathed.

It’s very LOUD when turbo-charged engines rev up and grind away in competitive stunts for several hours. Six-year-old Leila and four-year-old Archie wore protective headsets with flashing lights over their ears. We stuffed orange and white foam plugs tightly into each ear canal. The arena was packed with fans of all shapes and sizes, ages, and genders, defying stereotypes. Families, couples, and singles gathered for the same purpose, waiting for their favorite Monster truck to take center stage and perform.

And so, the show began.

Exactly on starting time, overhead lights dimmed. Multiple Monster trucks vroomed into the stadium flashing headlights, painted in bold designs. The first competition was racing around in a circle. Followed by the Two-Wheel event where each truck has two attempts to show their strongest skills on two wheels, either front or back. Drivers could choose to spin in a whirlwind of donut dust as an alternative in this category. The final competition was Freestyle, where trucks showcase any, or all, of their abilities in timed competition from ramp jumps and diving, flips, or wheelies.

Grave Digger, the most famous of them all

Like any subculture, Monster Jam has its own vocabulary. Cyclones are high speed donuts. Doing an endo is not cool. This is where the truck does a front-end rollover and crashes. Pagos are good and applauded loudly. It means doing a wheelie and bouncing forward on the rear tires. In contrast, riding the wave is bouncing up and down while standing precariously on the front tires. The hot shoe is the top driver who scores the most points overall. Grave Digger driver, of course.

During our show, the lone female driver attempted a flip…but failed. The indoor venue was a bit small for this maneuver, but she was the only one who tried. Then had to be rescued from sitting on her head by a massive crane that re-righted her machine. She emerged smiling and waving to the cheering crowd. And won the Freestyle event.

It’s a formula that works and has gained popularity over the decades. For adult spectators, large-can beer drinking is involved. For children, sticky blue and pink cotton candy from a bag is preferred. For any age, heavily breaded chicken nuggets and french fries smothered in ketchup. American dining not at its finest. But this is Monster Jam!

We said “yes” to it all and were caught in the uplifting atmosphere of a new experience. It was about participating in the enjoyment of a boy who knows the names of all the big trucks and has a fine collection of them at home. He owns this subculture, for now.

Here’s to boys and girls everywhere who love to push, [even across the street on the way to breakfast] or drive, big wheels that go around and around and sometimes even upside down.

Monster Jam. Know what it is. Don’t be a city slicker.

Bastille Day the French Way

July 10, 2022July 17, 2022 / wendyulfers / 11 Comments

When living in France, as we did for eight years, you learn there is no such thing as Bastille Day. Instead, “la Fête nationale” or “le 14 juillet” is the national public holiday celebrated on July 14 everywhere in France and in many places around the world. The date is never changed to make it convenient to a long weekend. It’s that important. Like 4^th of July, Christmas Day, and New Years’ eve.

The 14^th of July is the anniversary of the beginning of the revolution when the common people revolted against their king, Louis XVI, and the French aristocracy. In 1789, economic conditions in France were in crisis and tensions were nearing a breaking point. People were fed up and unable to afford daily bread.

The Bastille was a medieval fortress-prison that held political prisoners with no hope of pardon or freedom. It was also thought to contain munitions and gun powder. A crowd of angry citizens stormed inside the Bastille, freed the few [only 7 at the time] who were imprisoned, but found no guns. It was a compelling action and the rest, as they say, is history.

In 2010, we were living on the 5^th floor of a small apartment building in Paris’ 7^th arrondissement, on avenue de la Motte Picquet. Tall multi-paned windows opened like full length doors onto the street below. There was a direct view of the top third of the Eiffel Tower in the park of Champs de Mars. For five minutes every night, at the top of the hour, from dark until midnight we watched thousands of lights twinkling on la Tour Eiffel. It charmed our guests and was a spectacular display we never tired of during two years in the neighborhood.

What we did tire of was perpetual plumbing problems ancient apartment buildings in Paris are prone to. It’s all part of 19th century architectural charm. But still. Leaks from above dripped through our ceilings and light fixtures or down walls. After a middle of the night broken pipe in the wall of our unit flooded apartments one and two floors below, it was time to try our luck elsewhere in the city.

But for two summers, living near the Champs de Mars, we adventurously celebrated la Fête nationale far above the crowds amassed for the fireworks display along the river Seine. With the best seats in town.

French neighbors who lived in the apartment above ours shared the idea because they said the entire building would be deserted by early evening. And they weren’t going to try it themselves.

There was a tiny one-person-sized elevator in the back of the building that accessed 7^th floor apartments. These “chambres de bonne” were maid’s quarters in another century. But in this century they made for inexpensive living, like a one room studio. The ceiling in the hallway of 7^th floor had a trap door to the roof eight floors above the street.

By removing the ladder attached to the wall and climbing up to the hinged glass door, it was possible to unlatch and fold it back onto the metal roof. We came prepared. One backpack carried chilled champagne and glass flutes, crudités, and salty snacks. Another held big camera equipment. This was not a party for cell phone photography.

We gingerly situated ourselves on the angled roof near some chimney stacks and away from the sloping edge, set up the picnic, toasted a new adventure, waited for darkness and the show to begin.

We had a bird’s eye top-of-the-world view, albeit a bit precarious. Tiptoeing back up the roof and descending the ladder was another intrepid experience, but no one was the wiser. For two memorable years we managed to enjoy le 14 juillet festivities with a private rooftop party in magnificent Parisian scenery.

I’m reminded this week, on July 14, of the sacrifices French citizens made 233 years ago to spur change and move an entitled monarchy to a democratic republic for all.

Bonne Fête nationale aux français!

santé

El Rincón Taos New Mexico

April 29, 2022November 11, 2024 / wendyulfers / 16 Comments

Walking down a street off the square in Taos, New Mexico, I noticed an adobe building with a colorful door set back off the sidewalk. The name, El Rincón, caught my eye because a friend in Colorado had mentioned buying interesting turquoise jewelry there. Opening the bright blue painted door, I didn’t immediately realize I was entering the domain of a family saga that began more than 100 years ago. But I would soon learn that the maverick who started it all was named Ralph Waldo Emerson Meyers.

On that afternoon, Estevan Castillo, grandson of Ralph Meyers, greeted me from behind an antique display cabinet. Estevan has dark, curly, gray-flecked-hair and a gentle, soft spoken demeanor. He is a musician, a talented silversmith jeweler, and the owner of El Rincón, known as the oldest trading post in Taos. More importantly, he is “Contador de historias”, the teller and keeper of family stories.

Old wooden display cases with deeply scratched glass countertops drew me in right away. Some were filled with vintage “pawn” turquoise and silver. My appreciation for one-of-a-kind jewelry art has roots in a small cottage business I started when we lived overseas. For several years, I designed and sold ethnic necklaces and earrings made from beads, stones, and silver collected around the world.

1920s Santa Domingo cerillos turquoise necklace and lapis beads

Questions I asked Estevan were answered with stories. About bead strands collected and worn by his grandmother Rowena Meyers, artifacts made by Indians in his grandfather’s time, a photo of Estevan in the shop as a boy cutting holes in silver beads, one of his grandmother’s buckskin dresses hanging on the wall. I wanted to know more.

El Rincón first opened as the Mission Shop, an Indian curio store started by Ralph Meyers in the early part of the last century. Now it spans three generations. The evolution and survival of Taos’ oldest trading post is as remarkable as the museum quality Native American art and artifacts Meyers traded and sold. Some of his collections are now in the Smithsonian and Guggenheim Museums.

The history begins with a young man’s all-consuming passion to live his life in the “old west” of more than 100 years ago. And his desire to paint pictures of Indians. The history is best divided in two parts–during and after the life of Ralph Meyers.

PART ONE–The Ralph Meyers Years

Born in 1885, Ralph Waldo Emerson Meyers grew up in Denver, Colorado. He was a disinterested student and dropped out of school after third grade. But he was an avid learner with keen listening skills. He hung onto stories told by “old timers” of his era. Stories of Indians and rugged geographic beauty and remote life in the west. Even without formal art training, he wanted to make paintings of Indians in their environment. He talked easily to everyone which made him adept at turning relationships into friendships. And so, with a head full of stories, good communication skills, and an innate ability to teach himself anything, Meyers took off for rural New Mexico.

He worked as a fire guard for one year with the U.S. Forestry Service, stationed near Blue Lake, north of Taos. Blue Lake is sacred ceremonial ground for the Taos Pueblo Indians, worshiped as the source of life for the irrigation of their land. [See *End Notes]

Meyers lived a hermit’s life that year, but he connected personally with the Pueblo people and began trading with them. After several years of collecting Indian artifacts throughout the west and southwest he settled permanently in Taos, and the Mission Shop trading post opened for business.

Ralph Meyers was an outlier. He was the first white man to make social and professional relationships with the secluded Pueblo-dwelling Indians around Taos. Initially, the trading post highlighted Native American pottery, rugs, jewelry, baskets, buckskin, moccasins, and ceremonial beadwork. Then, as a self-taught oil painter, Meyers began displaying his own work. He was part of the emerging artist colony of Taos in the 1920s and ‘30s. Other creative people arrived–painters, photographers, and writers. Many were captivated by the beauty of the landscape, the simple unhurried pace of life, and they stayed.

He was drawn into the close circle of friends that wealthy New York art patron Mabel Dodge Luhan brought to the area–painter Georgia O’Keefe, writer D.H. Lawrence, photographer Ansel Adams, heiress and jewelry designer Millicent Rogers, Russian emigré and portrait painter Nicolai Fechin. Hollywood actors, musicians, and other artists cycled through Taos. Ralph Meyers knew them all. His ability to sustain trusted friendships across Indian and Spanish-American cultures, socio-economic status, gender, and notoriety contributed to his stature as a leading citizen.

Ralph Meyers was a mountain guide, business entrepreneur, and a Renaissance man of his generation. By observing other artists, he taught himself to oil paint. He learned to be a skilled silversmith, made his own tools, and created beautiful jewelry. He took up furniture making and wood carving in the Spanish colonial style. He taught himself leather working and beading. He learned to spin, dye, and weave wool blankets in the traditional ways. He trained and hired Indians to make jewelry, hand-bead moccasins, buckskin garments, and ceremonial ornaments in his shop. They were paid fair market prices which further engendered loyalty.

Then came family life. Rowena Matteson, born in Pennsylvania in 1909, moved to the Taos area as a child. She was engaged to an employee in The Mission Shop while she was a teenager. That relationship faded and another bloomed. Rowena married Ralph Meyers in 1933. He was 48. She was 24. Two children were born. Daughter Nina and son Ouray became artist/painters.

A rattlesnake bite through his thumbnail was the beginning of Meyers’ demise. He saw what he thought was a dead snake hanging in a tree and began swinging it around to entertain friends. It doubled back and bit him. There was no anti-venom treatment. After a debilitating infection and illness he died in 1948 at the age of 63.

For more than 36 years Ralph Meyers was a trusted icon in Taos and Pueblo communities. He was introspective with an extrovert’s personality. He had demons too. Mainly alcohol, which fueled angry and sometimes destructive behavior. One night, under the influence of whiskey, he took 30 of his paintings and set them on fire.

He loved his children but was self-absorbed by an extreme need to create or build or paint something every day. He was not remembered as a nurturing father. Rowena filled the gap.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Meyers was an unconventional man who loved Native American culture as an outsider but found his way inside the New Mexican Pueblo community. An original western icon who listened, learned, and bridged cultures with a legacy lasting long after a snake bite.

PART TWO–The Mission Shop becomes El Rincón

After Meyers’ death, Rowena closed the trading post, moved away, and leased the space to The Taos Bookshop for the next twenty years.

She returned in 1970, in a second marriage with another son, and moved into a house behind The Taos Bookshop. There she opened El Rincón [“the hidden corner”, in Spanish] to showcase jewelry, costumes, and artifacts acquired from continued trading. When the bookstore owners vacated the trading post building, Rowena moved back into the larger space and added a museum. The name El Rincón remained.

Eventually Rowena’s home became La Doña Luz Inn, a bed and breakfast started with daughter Nina in 1985. The building has been extensively renovated with new additions designed and built by Paco Castillo, Nina’s middle son. When Nina died in 2007, La Doña Luz was Paco’s inheritance. Nina’s vivid paintings can be seen throughout the inn in the form of colorful folk art kitchen cabinets, bathroom murals, and kiva fireplace surrounds. It’s a lovely historic building, rich in family art and creativity.

Oldest son of Nina, Miguel Castillo, owns the part of Ralph and Rowena’s homestead that was attached to the trading post. The front rooms were once a restaurant, also called La Doña Luz. With Ralph serving as chef, their dinner parties with other artists and guests were legendary and raucous, lasting long into the night. Now renovated, these rooms and former living quarters house boutique shops.

When I first walked into El Rincón, it felt like living history in every direction. There were relics and heirlooms and stories everywhere, hanging from the ceiling, tacked to the walls, or loaded into display cases. Shelves with dusty pottery and baskets. Concho belts, bolo ties, strings of beads, necklaces, bracelets, earrings, and rings, vintage and new silver and turquoise. A back room piled with artifacts, too many to absorb.

vintage turquoise & amber, silver pendants, concho belts & bead strands along wall

Over my several visits to Taos, Estevan has been a generous “Contador” of his family’s stories. Often, we talked in his workshop where strong natural light pours in the big windows with a view toward his brother’s Inn. Jewelry making tools, silver, stones, and unfinished projects cover the workbench. There are cans and containers of beads and silver lining a high shelf along one wall.

Estevan jewelry with diamonds added by another artist

Estevan Castillo is a nostalgic man. He remembers Rowena sitting on her chair in the late afternoon talking to Indian traders and customers while sipping a beer. He knew that his mother Nina was driven by a consuming need to paint every day. Just like her father. He is proud of the history and contributions of the ancestors who preceded him. He understands artistry, creation, and relationships founded on trust. Estevan knows devastation from tragic accidental deaths of his uncle and cousins. He has lived the bittersweet blessings of caretaking his grandmother and mother as they faded and died.

Today, Estevan preserves the legacy that began in the Mission Shop and continues in El Rincón. His stories are vivid. And like the grandfather he never knew, he can talk to anyone. In the worn adobe walls, darkly stained wooden beams, and eclectic collection of artifacts there are layers upon layers of stories. Ask a question or wonder about Taos history and the oldest trading post from 100+ years ago, then be ready for where Estevan’s stories take you.

*END NOTES:

Facts About the Taos Pueblo

Taos means “Place of Red Willows” and the Indians of the Taos Pueblo are the Red Willow People, from the pre-Hispanic period in north America. There are 19 Pueblo communities in New Mexico. The Taos Pueblo is the only Native American community designated both as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and as a National Historic Landmark.

Taos Pueblo is north of the town of Taos, located under Pueblo Peak [12,300 ft. elevation] in the Taos Mountain Range, which is part of the North American Rocky Mountains, specifically the Southern Rockies in the Sangre de Cristo Range. A tributary of the Rio Grande River runs through the property and provides running water and irrigation.

Rio Grande tributary as the Pueblo water source

The multi-storied adobe dwellings [made of mud, clay, water, and straw] of the Taos Pueblo are unique to this geography and have been inhabited for more than 1000 years, due to a determined Native American community. It is the only World Heritage site cited for its significance as a living Native American culture.

There is no inside running water or electricity in the Pueblo. In the beginning, the dwellings had no windows or doors and were entered by climbing a long ladder through a hole in the roof. That has changed. Most residents live outside of the walls for much of the year. They return for sacred ceremonies and for tourism before Covid 19 arrived. The Pueblo has been closed for two years and there is no current plan to re-open.
Preservation of the buildings is a priority for trained community members. The sun-dried mud brick is annually restored with a new coat of adobe plaster using both traditional and modern construction techniques. This occurs as part of a tribal ceremony.

In 1970, President Richard Nixon signed a law returning 48,000 acres to the Pueblo Indians. This included Blue Lake, where Ralph Meyers was once a fire ranger. It was worshipped as a water source, is sacred land, and off limits to outsiders. The law provided a new safeguard to the water supply, natural resources, and the welfare of the Pueblo. The land is now secure for all social and cultural events.

El Rincón Trading Post
114 Kit Carson Rd.
Taos, NM. 87571
Tel: 575-758-9188

Hosting and Guesting 101

January 23, 2022March 26, 2025 / wendyulfers / 17 Comments

A guest is good or bad because of the host who makes being a guest an easy or a difficult task. –Eleanor Roosevelt

When I was a child, there was a book called Miss Jellytot’s Visit that formed my first impression of what it means to be both a host and a guest. Nine-year-old Katie O’Dea watched her mother host college friend, Irene, in the guest room of their home. The bed was made up with the best linens and quilts in the house. There were big, soft feathery pillows in pink pillowcases that you could sink back into, and a rose on the bedside table. The towels were fluffy and white in the spotless bathroom. Their guest was served breakfast in bed on a tray with another rose alongside. There was an assortment of magazines and books to peruse in lounging leisure.

Katie dreamed of being a guest in her own house, staying in that comfortable room with nothing to do but dress up in fancy clothing, wear French perfume, and be waited on like “Aunt Rene”. With her parents’ indulgence, she arrives as a “visitor” from out of town, calling herself Miss Jellytot because that was the name of her favorite cookies. Everyone stayed in their assigned roles. Katie was treated like an adult the entire visit.

Of course, there were problems with all of this. The first was that Aunt Rene stayed for two weeks and never lifted a finger as she had come “to rest and relax.” Mrs. O’Dea was not sorry to see her friend leave on the train. The second was that Katie learned being a grown-up meant missing pleasurable childhood activities like playing outside with friends, going to swim parties, or getting a new puppy. She couldn’t wait to end her “visit” after six days and be a kid again. Lessons: Don’t jump into adulthood when you haven’t finished the fun of being a child. And don’t overstay.

The story left me with “how-tos” carried into my own adult life. As a guest in someone else’s home, I stay no more than three days, with exceptions for family birthings or need-to-help home stays. I also like to set up a room for overnight guests in my home that is cozy and welcoming and well-outfitted. A room that I would enjoy spending time in, too.

In early December, a cousin’s memorial service created the need to travel to St. Louis while I was already out of town for another event. My niece, Rebecca, has a large home with a guest bedroom and bath separate from the family’s living space. It was mine for the weekend. I flew in from across the country on a blustery wet night, rented a car and drove to her house knowing that everyone was out for the evening.

It couldn’t have been a better welcoming. Shrugging off coat in the back door entry, I smelled something delicious. Christmas lights and decorations were twinkling in every room. There was soft music coming from a speaker in the kitchen. Simmering on the stove was a pot of homemade chicken soup. There was a place setting on the counter next to a fresh baguette, butter, and a note inviting me to help myself. I was warmed to my soul.

I sighed gratefully and headed for the bedroom. Lights were on, a little gift in a colorful bag was on the bedside table next to a carafe of water. White towels were folded on the chair by the window. The bed was layered with white quilts, comforters, and billowy pillows.

Back in the kitchen, I poured a glass of wine, served myself a bowl of soup with bread and butter on the side, and said aloud, “This woman gets it.”

Hosting overnight guests involves providing for them in surprising and generous ways, going out of your way to roll out the welcome mat, even if you aren’t there to open the door. My niece checked all those boxes.

Rebecca is an interior decorator and organizer extraordinaire in her home and for her clients.

On a previous visit I noticed an opportunity where I could be of help. There is a small, temperature-controlled wine room in the basement. I had seen bottles of red and white and bubbly of differing vintages and values pushed randomly into wine slots. There were shelves a-jumble with gifted booze never opened and never intending to be drunk, gift bags strewn on the floor. If trying to find something special to serve and drink, well, there was no order.

My offer–to sit with her [and a charcuterie plate and two glasses of wine], pull everything off the shelves, put like vintages together, separate great bottles from the good and the cooking variety, use the label maker, toss out or give away questionable items like Ever Clear [!], horrible flavors of vodka, and other unidentifiable poisons. We set aside whisky that I might drink on another visit. She was thrilled. I was happy to spend time in a companionable activity in return for her hospitality. Win-win, like a thank you note in action.

Guest: Be genuine. Be remarkable. Be worth connecting with. –Seth Godin

Hosting at home can also be a celebratory party, a dinner, an outside barbecue. The host sets the stage while guests bring their exuberant mood, conversational banter, and best engaging self to round out the table. The most memorable get-togethers with family or friends have free-flowing discussions, storytelling, perhaps some soul searching, and laughter.

To me it has always been clear that a dinner party is about what is said, not what is eaten. There would always be wine and salad and bread and stew: chocolate and fruit and nuts and sparkling cold duck. But those were just the props — the conduits for funny and real and meaningful conversation; the set pieces of a lively, engaged, lingering old-school dinner party. The one that I have been chasing ever since…

–Gabrielle Hamilton, chef and author

at home in Paris with petit-déjeuner for guests, 2018

We have a friend who masterfully slips in what he calls “the provocation” during dinner parties and casual social gatherings. It’s not confrontational and participation is optional. It’s a conversational attention grabber along the lines of “Who was an important influence in your life?” or “What is something that changed the direction of your life?” or “Have you experienced anything scientifically unexplainable, something paranormal?” Everyone chimes in because it adds another dimension to what we know about people we care about, and isn’t that why we get together in the first place? Adding detail, bridging thoughts and ideas with content, creating connection.

One more thing about being a good host and an even better guest. After years of inviting people to our home in Colorado, and for many years overseas, I have learned to enjoy late hours clean-up after the candles are snuffed and guests have cheerily said, “Good Night”. I like putting the kitchen back in order by myself or with my husband and thinking about the best parts of the evening. Again, from Gabrielle Hamilton:

I’ve always been against the insistent, well-meaning cleanup brigade that convenes in the kitchen before anybody has even digested…When I invite you over, I mean it. I mean: Sit down. I will take care of you. I will buy the food and get the drinks and set the table and do the cooking, and I will clean up after. And when I come to your house, you will do the same. I will get to have the honor of being a guest. To perfectly show up, 10 minutes after the appointed time, with a bottle in hand for you, to bring my outgoing, conversational self, my good mood, my appetite, and to then enjoy all that is offered to me, and to then get my coat at the very end and leave without having lifted a finger. It is just the greatest thing of all time…

Yes, it is.

Notes:

Rebecca uses bamboo sheet sets from Cozy Earth. They live up to the advertising “sleeping on a cloud”. www.cozyearth.com
Gabrielle Hamilton wrote the memoir, Blood, Bones, and Butter. Her writing voice is very engaging. She also owned and cooked at Prune Restaurant in East Village, NYC until the first Covid shutdowns in 2020. She contributes occasional articles to the NY Times.
For additional stories, international anecdotes, and photos about hosts and guests there is this: The Grown-Up Table.

rebecca, daughter emily and aunt wendy in paris, march 2018

Both Sides of the Bountiful Table

November 12, 2021May 8, 2025 / wendyulfers / 9 Comments

Thanksgiving Day 2021 is the 400^th anniversary of the first harvest feast when the English Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts celebrated survival after a harsh introductory year in the New World. It wasn’t until 1863 that President Abraham Lincoln decreed an annual Thanksgiving holiday on the fourth Thursday of November.

Is what we know about Thanksgiving a day of celebration based on actual history or popular mythology? It depends where you get the story–from the perspective of the victors or the vanquished. In actual history, the Wampanoag Indians, who indeed helped the Pilgrims survive, were not officially invited to the celebratory harvest dinner. But they showed up anyway. And stayed for three days.

In land covering present day southeastern Massachusetts and part of Rhode Island, the Wampanoag Nation once numbered 30,000-100,000 strong. Their lineage can be traced back more than 10,000 years. They lived on the coastline in summer and moved inland during winter. Their geography provided herring and trout from the water, deer, elk, and bear from the forest, and crops planted and harvested on cleared land.

For the previous 100 years, the Wampanoag and other tribes had been trading and fighting with European explorers who passed through the area. Shortly before the Pilgrims came to settle at Plymouth Rock in 1620, the Wampanoag population had been decimated by a three-year pandemic of smallpox and yellow fever which they called “The Great Dying”. They lost approximately two thirds of their people.

Seeing women and children disembark from the Mayflower, the Wampanoag chief decided these people had not come to fight, but to stay. That winter, the Indians watched as half of the English died of cold, starvation, and disease.

Because of their own reduced numbers after the pandemic, the chief wanted to make allies, not war, with the new settlers. He had another ulterior motive–to get better weapons [guns] to use against their own neighboring tribal enemies. So, the Wampanoag people approached the starving settlers in the spring of 1621 and showed them the best way to plant, fertilize with fish entrails, and harvest crops that would survive–corn, beans and squash.

That fall, after a successful first harvest and the know-how to see them through succeeding winters, the Pilgrims decided to celebrate with a feast of thanks. The Wampanoags were not invited but showed up after hearing gunfire which they presumed to be the start of a war. They were dressed to fight but ended up joining the Pilgrim party as guests. Indian hunters brought in five deer to share. The feasting and revelry went on for three days and nights.

Was it a mistake for the Indians to befriend the Pilgrims? No one can answer for the actions of their ancestors, but today’s surviving members of the Wampanoag nation believe the wrong decision was made. After that first feast of celebration for a plentiful harvest and survival, colonization began in earnest. It was followed by the slow genocide of native people. More waves of Europeans landing on the shores led to more disease and more death of the indigenous cultures. The Wampanoag lands were stripped away, and their traditions shunned with enforced Christianity and boarding school attendance for children.

In 1970, a Wampanoag activist designated a “National Day of Mourning” to counter the national celebration of Thanksgiving Day.

Today, immersion schools have begun for Wampanoag children to learn subjects in their [almost lost] native language. For adults there are language classes. A museum near Plymouth is dedicated to the Wampanoag Indians and their contributions. There is an emphasis on the education and explanation of culture, traditions, and history, including the original Thanksgiving story.

From the conquerors’ gain, there is always loss and disarray left behind. On Thanksgiving Day, as in other years, the Wampanoag gather for a meal and give thanks, not for the Pilgrims arrival in the New World, but to their ancestors and for their survival as a tribe.

For the past 158 years, since Thanksgiving became a holiday, we pause on this day to say “Thank You” for blessings great and small among family and friends. As we gather to share with others in celebration and gratitude, let’s also remember the diverse contributions on both sides of the table, beginning more than 400 years ago.

______________________________________________________________________________

The inspiration for this Thanksgiving story came from an article in the Washington Post by Dana Hedgpeth, “This Tribe helped the Pilgrims survive their first Thanksgiving. They still regret it 400 years later.”

For a different view of Thanksgivings spent in countries overseas where it is not a holiday and the Best Dressing Recipe in the World, see the story French-splaining American Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Blessing

Today we give thanks:

For food in a world where many walk in hunger,

For friends in a world where many walk alone,

For faith and hope in a world where many walk in fear or sorrow.

Let us give thanks for this food, this home, and all things good,

For the wind and sun above

And most of all for those we love–

Family and friends here and around the world.

–Author unknown

Gratitude

I offer my gratitude for the safety and well-being I have been given.

I offer my gratitude for the blessings of this earth I have been given.

I offer my gratitude for the measure of health I have been given.

I offer my gratitude for the family and friends I have been given.

I offer my gratitude for the community I have been given.

I offer my gratitude for the teachings and lessons I have been given.

I offer my gratitude for all this, including the life I have been given.

–Jack Kornfield

Paris al Fresco

October 19, 2021April 5, 2025 / wendyulfers / 12 Comments

Sitting every night at the dining table with my wife, sharing our meal and a bottle of wine, discussing the events of the day…This daily ritual has been ingrained so profoundly within us that we could not live without it and that is how food memories are made. –Jacques Pepin

If you watch people eat, you can find out so much about them. Eating is learned behavior; one of the ways cultures define themselves is by teaching children what to eat…But as we get older, we begin to make our own food choices and they are equally telling. If I tell you I like very spicy food, I’m not just talking about food…I’m telling you I like adventure. –Ruth Reichl

Yesterday was the first rain/sleet/snowstorm in our part of the Colorado mountains. I spent the afternoon on the sofa with a fire blazing, a book in my lap, and candles on the coffee table as the light faded. The season for sitting outside with a cup of coffee, a glass of wine, or a meal is behind us now.

fireside afternoon, new snow on Long’s Peak

Europeans have well-established dining rituals built into their cultures for centuries. Having lived in Germany and France, memories filter in on this quiet day. When we lived in France dining outside, “al fresco”, occured throughout the year, weather permitting, whether sipping “un café” or “un verre de vin” or enjoying a meal. It is as acceptable to do this alone as it is with friends or family.

cappuccino and wine in Paris, pizza in the courtyard in Germany

My friend, Michelle, is American/French, married to a Frenchman, Jean Louis. They both own their own businesses. Michelle and her partner are in relocation services with their company, A Good Start in France. Jean Louis took over his mother’s bookstore which started out specializing in rare books on mountain climbing in the 1930’s. Since then, Librairie des Alpes has expanded into books on mountain imagery, guidebooks, rare, vintage, and new books of photos, art, lithographs, and even postcards. It continues to reflect the spirit of the mountains on rue de Seine in Paris’ 6^th Arrondissement.

Michelle and Jean Louis live in a charming glass fronted two story house that looks like an atelier [artist’s studio] with so much natural light flooding in. It has a private courtyard outside the kitchen and living room.

Almost every Sunday morning Michelle and Jean Louis walk to the Porte de Vanves Flea Market which is in their neighborhood in the 14^th Arrondissement.

After browsing and schmoozing with vendors they have long known, they head home stopping at a local market for lunch ingredients. Theirs is a mixed ethnic section of Paris which offers a rich variety of flavors in food choices in their market. Seasonal fruits and vegetables come straight from the farm, their favorite fish vendor is from Martinique and specializes in spicy, white fish dumplings called “acras de morue”, from the butcher they buy Lyon sausage, the boulanger provides fresh baguette and pastries.

What do I miss about living in Paris? It’s right here–in every local market in every neighborhood throughout the city. Choosing what to eat from the best and freshest ingredients all year long. I miss daily shopping on my market street.

Sometimes I ran into Michelle and Jean Louis on Flea Market weekends. One Sunday, shortly before we left France, I was invited to meet them at 10 AM for a walkabout/browse/pick up a trinket followed by lunch in their home courtyard. In the warm months, lunch takes on the informality of tapas, an assortment of small dishes. Always wine and a basket of sliced baguette.

The generosity of the French table is akin to honoring the spirit of the guests invited for a sit-down meal. Any meal, simple or formal, pays tribute equally to the guest and to the hosts who prepare it. It is a time to gather, enjoy good food, exchange information, share conversation (often politics), and memorable time with others. The art of the debate is encouraged and freely employed. No subject is off limits. This is a centuries-honored ritual of dining à la français.

For our lunch fare, the table was laid with spicy “acras” or codfish dumplings, slices of farm tomatoes with basil snipped from the courtyard garden, shrimp and avocado, cucumber salad with dill and a dash of piment d’espelette, a cheese assortment of buffalo mozzarella, goat, and camembert, smoked salmon, asparagus, roasted red peppers and tuna salad which Michelle spices with lots of chopped shallots and Dijon mustard. [She says French people think tuna salad is exotic because of its inherent American-ness]. A glass of wine, bien sûr.

What I remember is conversation that was lively and fluid, a Willy Ronin black and white photo [which I admired and was given as a gift], delicious food to dip bread into, and a host and hostess most charming. This “meal as a ritual of exchange and sharing”, in Michelle’s words, is a perfect reverie on a snowy indoor day. In France, every single sit-down meal is like this, whether sitting with one other person or a tableful of guests. Ah, France.

I believe we replicate this in America, perhaps not daily, but better on our national holidays of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter where traditions and patterns around food are more universal in many families. Religious traditions also claim meal rituals and memories particularly around their holidays.

There are other stories of living in France, many written while we lived there. But today, this one of friends and food and time spent around a table in a cozy Parisian courtyard comes just at the right moment. It is vivid and warms me to the core while I gaze at blowing snow and autumn slides into winter.

Michelle often makes a seasonal soup for Sunday lunch. Fresh spinach soup is one of her staples. Spinach is out of season here now, but this is her recipe in simple format to try on your own.

Michelle’s Homemade Spinach Soup

Thoroughly wash and stem 2 pounds of fresh spinach leaves.
Heat olive oil in a large stockpot, add lots of chopped shallots and sauté until wilted.
Peel and chop 1-2 large potatoes.
Add spinach, potatoes, and water or chicken or vegetable stock to the pot. [You can use a pressure cooker if you have one.]
Simmer until spinach cooks down and potatoes are soft.
Using an immersion blender, blend ingredients together in the pot.
Season to taste with salt and pepper and some piment d’espelette. [Espelette pepper]
Serve in a bowl with a little design made with cream or half and half on top.

Carolina On My Mind

July 14, 2021March 7, 2025 / wendyulfers / 15 Comments

There is something evanescent, temporary and fragile about food. You make it. It goes, and what remains are memories. But these memories of food are very powerful. –Jacques Pépin

It takes a long time to grow an old friend. –John Leonard

These quotes remind me of the last time I visited my friend Gail in the mountains of North Carolina. Gail is my longest “go to” friend. We met at age 16 when my family moved to a small town in Iowa along the Mississippi River. She balances my analytic nature with kindness and consideration toward everyone. She is intuitive and listens like a compassionate counselor. She knows my eccentricities and loves me anyway. When I was undergoing medical treatments and the rest of my family was overseas, she jumped in to help by coming to Colorado and being with me. We laugh easily and know each other’s stories. Even when too much time has passed, there is immediate ease when re-engaging in each other’s lives. Although we don’t share the same blood, she is my sister too.

We didn’t know it at the time we became friends as teenagers but that is when we began living the concept of “growing an old friend”. We were unwavering through the high school years, the university years, summer jobs in the Wisconsin north woods, a western road trip at 21, marriages one week apart, children, and now grandchildren. We haven’t lived near each other for a long time, but we talk on the phone or visit back and forth in our respective states of Colorado and North Carolina as often as we can.

When we were 20, Gail and I worked one summer at a camp for girls on a lake in northern Wisconsin. It was the same year that she introduced me to the man I would marry three years later. She loyally returned from her honeymoon to stand next to me in our wedding one week after I had been a bridesmaid in hers. With husbands, our friendship grew as couples.

The last time I was in North Carolina we spent the entire visit in the Blue Ridge Mountain community of Leatherwood rather than in the city. It was early August and humidly warm in the mountains. Low bluish clouds formed a canopy over and around the green mountains across the valley. It’s a mystical and captivating way to greet each morning. And such contrast to Colorado’s high rocky peaks, golden aspens, and dry mountain air.

The food recollections from that visit are so clear. Gail made a pre-dinner apéro by muddling very ripe peaches in the bottom of a glass then poured Vino Verde [a light Portuguese sparkling white wine] over the top. Along with the wine were appetizers of pickled okra [very southern] and small slices of Manchego cheese. Manchego is a firm sheep’s milk cheese with buttery texture and mild taste. It was a perfect combination. The company, the light food, the ambience.

There was one quirky but memorable cocktail hour involving neighbors who invited us to their home. Burdette, a retired architect, 90 years-old, wanted to prepare his own version of “The World’s Best Martini”. Gail’s husband is a bourbon man and politely declined. But the three women–Gail, her sister, and I agreed to try. There was much ceremony involved in the preparation of glasses, the assembly of ingredients, the shaking of equal parts of vodka, gin, AND vermouth. Only one olive allowed per glass. We sipped. It was okay, but what I appreciated most was their living room Rumford fireplace–a tall, shallow, masonry fireplace of European design. They had added a swinging black pot apparatus to cook soup or stew over the open fire. It seemed romantically retro, but I could see myself sitting by a fire that way.

When in Carolina do as the locals do. Or drink as the locals drink. In many southern states, this means bourbon. Craig, Gail’s husband, is a quintessential bourbon guy. He has his own version of an Old Fashioned. The only time I drink bourbon whiskey is when he makes this for me. A slice of orange, some Bada Bing cherries, two shots of good bourbon, fill with club soda and ice. His daily bourbon is Maker’s Mark. For splurging, he reaches for Jefferson’s Ocean or Woodford’s Reserve to sip over ice.

pickled okra, Gail’s glass of white, Craig’s bourbon old fashioned special

The best meal was something new to me. Shredded beef brisket with a smoky homemade sauce. Cooked long and slow in the oven and served as a main course with side dishes of cornbread, beans, and salad–the epitome of southern cuisine. Perfect for guests and great leftovers.

Each day was full–with morning walks before the heat rose to a crescendo, a side trip to Blowing Rock’s boutique shops, outdoor showers with wide-angle valley views, picnic lunch in a park, and noisy Jenga games ending with blocks crashing to the floor amid cries of “Oh no!” and laughter.

champagne picnic–Craig and Gail, Wendy & Tam

Craig’s handmade jenga set and studying the physics of play

The Carolina mountains have been on my mind recently for a particular reason. Several seasons have passed and now it feels like time to return. To a different climate and different scenery. To those lower, greener hills, and humid misty clouds. To friends who make a difference in my life when we are together and even when we are not.

Jacques Pepin is right about the fleeting nature of food. You make it. It goes. What remains, what is truly powerful, is when we nourish our lives with memories of food in a spectacular setting, in a meal around a table, and taking time to grow the very best of friends.

GAIL’S BEEF BRISKET

Brisket is a tough cut of beef that must be tenderized by long, slow cooking. I adjusted the recipe for high altitude as most food takes longer to cook at 8300 feet where we live. My edits are in parentheses. The secret to this recipe is the sauce. Shredding the cooked brisket rather than slicing it eliminates the fat layer, leaving only the lean.

INGREDIENTS:

5-6 lb brisket [I have used smaller]
Salt and Pepper
Liquid Smoke

Place brisket in baking dish with fat side up. Rub salt and pepper and liquid smoke onto both sides of meat. Cover with foil and seal edges of pan. Marinate 12 hours or overnight in the refrigerator.

pouring liquid smoke over and rubbing with salt & pepper

NEXT DAY:

Preheat oven to 275 degrees F.
Place sealed baking dish in oven for 5 hours.
[Better than timing is to test with a meat thermometer as it will take 2 or more hours longer at higher altitudes. Internal temperature should reach 200 degrees F.]
When meat is tender and done, take two forks and shred onto a serving platter.
Discard the fat layer.
Pour sauce over or serve in a pitcher, on the side.
Serve brisket on buns or as a main course with side dishes.
Leftovers are easily reheated and just as delish.

shred brisket with two forks, discard fat, serve with side dishes, pour sauce over the top or serve on the side

FOR THE SAUCE:

2 C. catsup
½ C. water
3 T. Liquid Smoke
4 T. Worcestershire sauce
8 T. butter
3 T. brown sugar
3 t. dry mustard
2 t. celery seed
¼ to ½ t. cayenne pepper

In a saucepan, slowly heat all ingredients together while stirring.

Frozen Euphoria

June 9, 2021August 16, 2024 / wendyulfers / 15 Comments

One of my favorite M.F.K. Fisher quotes is: Wine and cheese are ageless companions, like aspirin and aches, or June and moon, or good people and noble ventures. To this I would add another companion comparison from my own recent experience: children and ice cream.

In 1686, the first café in Paris, Le Procope, opened in Saint-Germain-des-Prés with a Sicilian chef at the helm. His recipe of milk, cream, butter and eggs, an early Italian gelato, made ice cream available to the general public for the first time. For centuries it had only been enjoyed by the aristocracy. Over in America, it wasn’t until 1790 that an ice cream parlor opened in New York. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln were known to have an affinity for this creamy icy treat. Ice cream’s reign as an indelible taste of summer is in the hearts of people around the world. Perhaps children most of all.

When I was growing up, the seasonal ice cream truck rang its bell through the streets of our neighborhood in St. Louis once or twice a week every June, July, and August. Parents doled out pocket change. We shouted and ran to the ice cream man who opened his portable freezer filled with drumstick cones or chocolate coated vanilla ice cream on a stick or ice cream sandwiches. It was a race to eat as fast as possible in the heat and humidity while trying not to lose precious drips on the way home. There was usually some kind of messy “plop” on the sidewalk which was left for the ants.

There are, of course, other foods typically consumed in the summer besides ice cream. Fresh corn-on-the-cob or s’mores made around a campfire are two of them. Food happiness, measured individually by expression, is certain to occur when delicious things are eaten by young children for the first time.

looking, tasting, then boy of few words ate the whole thing and was happy

s’more assembly, first bite, pleasure all in the eyes

In April, we drove across two states to care for a two-and-a-half-year old grand-daughter and her eleven-month-old brother while their tired parents flew somewhere else for adult R & R. We brushed off muscle memory around the heavy lifting required with infants and toddlers. By the third day, it was time for a change of scenery away from the house, backyard, and front porch. Some kind of field trip.

Because of the previous fifteen months of shutdown life during Covid, I thought an outing for ice cream might be just the thing for young and unsuspecting palates. Also, it could be accomplished outdoors on a warmish spring day.

With the 2-year-old, things began with the anticipation of a drive somewhere new. There was curiosity to stand at a window, place an order, and be held up to see what was going on inside. There was eagerness when a cup of vanilla ice cream smothered in rainbow sprinkles was handed through the window. There was barely contained excitement while carrying it to a red iron bench and sitting down with a spoon and her own multi-colored delight.

While husband fed tiny tastes of ice cream to infant brother, the independent “I-dood-it-myself” girl spooned one transformative bite into her mouth. After one or two more she discovered a faster method.

It was the hand-to-mouth-vacuum-cleaner-technique. Her eyes narrowed momentarily as the heady sensation of cold and sweet sank in. Both hands tipped the cup to vertical maximum.

There was a moment of selfish possessiveness as she huffily pulled away from brother’s outreaching hand. Letting the remainder of the icy creamy semi-liquid slide into her mouth, she paused to consider what had just happened. Then, with a smug and satisfied grin, what was left was an empty container and face, hands, and clothes covered in sticky.

The success of the outing was summed up in one final moment. It was the kind of moment that captures the best part of kids and ice cream. With a timely click of the camera, a small girl was framed in a spontaneous second of joy…and ice cream euphoria.

Happy Summer.

The Coleman House, Villa Ridge, Missouri

April 30, 2021July 19, 2026 / wendyulfers / 23 Comments

Joseph Campbell said that sacred places are where you go to wake up something important about yourself. Specifically, “A place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are or what you might be.”

…go where your body and soul want to go. When you have that feeling, then stay with it and don’t let anyone throw you off. –J. Campbell

When I wrote about how creating and inhabiting personal space nourishes us from the inside out (The Poetry of Space), I remembered a place rooted in my childhood. It was an 1840’s, pre-Civil War, stately brick home fronting more than 600 acres of Missouri woods and farmland.

Why did a 100+ year-old house in Villa Ridge, Missouri, deeded to my grandmother on the sudden death of her second husband, John Coleman, take me metaphorically “where body and soul wanted to go”? I stayed with the feeling, as Campbell suggested, dug into archival history, then realized it was a story of its own.

This place, in rural Missouri, is why houses and spaces resonate with me. Time spent here, in a house with more than a century of history, was where I learned that certain spaces are more than a container with walls and floors.

illustration of Coleman House by Eloise LeSaulnier, 1975

I don’t remember John Coleman, who wed my grandmother late in life, but I do remember the house that his grandfather, Spencer J. Coleman, bought exactly one hundred years before John, his last living heir and my step-grandfather, dropped dead outside the home where he was born.

That unexpected death occurred two years into the second marriage of John Coleman and my paternal grandmother, Effie (“Fifi”) Harbour Coulter. They wed in 1954. John died two years later at age 77. Fifi, widowed for the second time at age 68, was deeded the house and 665 acres of prime Missouri farmland.

wedding photo john and effie coleman (center), I’m on my mother’s lap next to john and fife

The Coleman House, as it is called today, became the place for our extended family to spend time together. Thirty miles from St. Louis off old Highway 100, Fifi’s six children and many grandchildren annually spent Memorial Day, July 4^th and Labor Day holidays at the farm. Potluck picnics were set up on tables in the side yard. The adult crowd socialized on lawn chairs set out under towering trees while grandchildren from toddlers to teens were largely left to their own devices.

In my age group, cousins ran freely around the house and outbuildings or across the road to the school playground. We banged out every duet version of “Chopsticks” on the old upright piano. We walked the grassy road to the first big gate. If the black bull with a reputation for charging wasn’t in sight, we went on through and down the hill to the pond. Or we walked farther into the woods looking for the headstones of a family cemetery.

It was a jubilant time with a different brand of freedom; protected independence, discovery and exploration, wide-open country spaces, and the backdrop of a slightly downtrodden, but still imposing house, with tall-ceilinged rooms so different from the way we lived in town.

The condition and decor of the house might be described as mid-20^th century shabby. There had been multiple renovations since its pre-Civil War prime. At this time, it featured large-patterned wallpaper, beige carpeting over wood floors, rickety enclosed porches with creaky, tilting floorboards, and fireplaces sealed or completely walled off. The eat-in kitchen had no built-in counter space. The plumbing upstairs and down was cast iron bathtubs, no showers.

cousin judy when she lived at the farm, with curlers and large format wallpaper

What it looked like didn’t matter. What I remember is feeling happiness and liberating independence when I was there. Coleman House was where I “woke up” to making a decision about the future. I would only live in places and spaces that offered a brand of comfort and being at home in myself.

The summer I turned 11, we moved to a different state. Two years later we returned to visit the St. Louis family. At that time, an aunt and uncle and two of my closest cousins were living with Fifi to help manage the big house, the livestock, and the fields.

When it was time to drive back to Texas, I begged to be left for a longer stay. The rest of that summer is etched in long-term memory. Finally I was living in a place I loved, where learning and experiencing and confidence building occurred by waking up in rural country spaces every day.

My cousin Karen taught me to drive a 4-on-the-floor stick shift VW Beetle over dirt farm roads. I gathered eggs, hung wet laundry to dry on clotheslines in the sun, picked garden strawberries, rode tractors, hand milked the cow, and stuck my finger into the thick layer of cream at the top of the milk canister. In the pick up truck, we checked on the cows down in the fields, sometimes with hay or a block of salt. I hiked to where the tiny Coleman cemetery was hidden back in the woods.

My cousin Judy and I had a job selling July Fourth fireworks at a temporary stand on the highway. We sweated through our clothes, walked home covered in dust, and with a little money in our pockets. Before falling asleep, I climbed onto Judy’s bed under the window hoping to catch a whiff of breeze. Every night, with hands propped under her chin, she rattled off the make, model, and year of each passing car as it rounded the curve in the highway. Squinting at red taillights from a second floor window across a wide expanse of lawn and listening to her monologue was completely sleep inducing.

In the old house, Judy felt the presence of “others.” No one believed her. According to her daughter Elise’s retelling, radio and television dials were in the habit of flipping on and off. Once, to make it stop, Judy unplugged the big radio in the kitchen, but the music continued. Sometimes the vacuum cleaner mysteriously went into action with no human nearby. On her only visit to the house, Elise herself experienced an eerie vision of “a coffin with a body” right where she was standing. She ran out of the house to escape the image. In an earlier century, the room she was standing in was used as the viewing parlor when family members died. Current owners of Coleman House mention “a light” or “a shadow” going up the staircase from time to time.

When Fifi died, her estate was sold in its entirety, house and acreage, to a real estate firm in St. Louis and later to Ralston Purina Company. Purina owned much of the surrounding land since the 1920s and still operates a research farm in the area.

I knew the Coleman House before I understood Joseph Campbell’s sentiment about “sacred places and spaces”. It awakened something inside me at a tender age for two reasons. It was a unique and memorable place. And I was with people who granted me the freedom to experiment and experience during formative years.

Everything that happened at Coleman house helped nurture my better self then and brought forth the person I became.

ADDENDUM 1

A Consolidated History of the Coleman Family and Coleman House

In 1837, Spencer Joseph Coleman [1816-1888] moved west, with his father and brothers, from the depleted soils of Virginia to land south of the Missouri River near St. Louis. They planned to start a new family plantation. By 1841, Spencer married Elizabeth Ann Wright and decided he liked the land further west, near Gray Summit, in Franklin County. So he split off from the family and began buying up different sized parcels over many years. Eventually he acquired 665 acres of rolling hills and fertile fields for growing tobacco and hemp.

Along the way he saw an elegant red brick mansion built by James Ming in the 1840’s. He offered to buy it with an attached 200 acres. Ming was a skilled craftsman and had built the home for himself using walnut, white pine, and oak cut from the land. He oversaw the making of each brick–cut from clay soil, shaped, molded and fired on site. But he sold the house and land to Spencer for $6000.00 in 1856.

It was initially called Bellaire, a solidly built mansion of masonry walls two bricks thick with a foundation of limestone blocks. The front porch entry was relatively small, but featured hand carved decorations and four columns on the front and two on either side of the door. There was leaded glass above and around the door.

front of coleman house, date unknown, in 1800s

Inside were two large rooms flanking a central walnut staircase. The back entrance opened to a double open porch gallery of two stories with its own smaller stairway. Beams used to support the upper gallery were hand hewn from trees cut on property and cemented with wooden pins. The kitchen was also in the back with an attached summer kitchen for hot weather cooking. Upstairs were three bedrooms, two large ones at the front of the house and a smaller nursery behind. There were six fireplaces for heating, three on each floor.

Spencer Coleman, with wife Elizabeth Ann [1823-1867] and four children, moved into Ming’s mansion in 1856. For the next 100 years it was passed down through succeeding Coleman generations. Eldest son William Joseph Coleman [1848-1925] was the first to inherit the house and farm when Spencer died in 1888.

William Coleman married 15-year-old Emma Lou Sullivan [1860-1883] in 1875. She bore three children before dying tragically when her skirts caught on fire while burning trash and leaves in the orchard. She was only 23. William was left with two young living children–Emma Josephine [1876-1952] and my grandfather by marriage, John Marshall Coleman [1879-1956]. William asked his unmarried sister, Elmira, to move in and help care for the family. He never married again.

That generation of Colemans, Emma and John, children of William and Emma Lou, and grandchildren of Spencer and Elizabeth Ann, produced no heirs.

John Coleman’s first wife died in 1925. He waited 29 years to remarry. The second time was to my paternal grandmother Effie Lavina Harbour Coulter (Fifi). He was 75. She was 66. Fifi had raised five daughters and one son, my father Joseph Clayton. My grandfather, Andrew Joseph Coulter, left her widowed in 1946.

Fifi’s wedding to John Coleman, with her children, from left: Jackie, Lee, Nicky, Effie, Joe, Bess, Dot, 1954

Effie and John had already known each other for many years. John was a lawyer by degree but worked as the bookkeeper for my grandfather’s “Coulter Hay Feed and Grain” store in downtown Kirkwood, Missouri. It is rumored that he was sweet on Fifi for a long time before asking her to marry. She moved into Coleman House in May 1954.

Two years later, John was in the yard talking to a neighbor about building another pond in the fields when he keeled over from a heart thrombosis and died instantly. My cousin, Linda, remembers it vividly because she was spending the night at the farm as she often did with Fifi.

From the purchase of the property by Spencer in 1856 to John’s death in 1956, one hundred years of Coleman legacy ended that summer evening. My grandmother inherited the estate. For the next seventeen years Coleman House and farm was part of our extended family.

In 1973 Fifi died and everything was eventually purchased by Ralston Purina Company. It added a large parcel to their adjacent land. Transient workers, who were researching animals or Purina product development, moved in and out. Soon everything–the house, grounds, and outbuildings fell into crumbling disrepair.

ADDENDUM 2

The Renovation Years

Finally, in 1985, Purina sold the house “as is” with a few acres of land to a couple working for the company. That’s when transformation began. I didn’t meet these owners, but I learned that their labor-of-love restorations saved the historic property from complete ruin. Over many years, with a contractor’s help, the house was gutted and literally rebuilt from the inside out.

Because it was solid brick construction, they began pulling down interior plaster walls to build new walls with studs, insulation, and dry wall. All six fireplaces were opened and restored to the top of the chimneys. In the kitchen, one fireplace was hidden behind a wall. It turned into a beautiful and usable part of the room.

kitchen fireplace uncovered and restored

dining and living room fireplaces rebuilt

White pine floors were uncovered and refinished. The walnut staircase was refurbished. The attic was insulated. Original single pane windows were replaced by custom built ones. Two rickety enclosed porches on the back were torn off and rebuilt to their original open architecture.

The smallest of the upstairs bedrooms was opened and incorporated into the master bathroom with a fireplace and sitting area, which is now used as a sewing room. The summer kitchen was torn off and rebuilt brick by brick to become the back entrance. The old wooden front porch must have been unsalvageable because it was replaced with bricks spanning the front of the house and a second floor balcony was added. Shutters were hung on the outside windows.

After years of living in a construction zone, a job change occurred, and the property sold in 2003 to the couple who now live there. They have added their own touches–an attached garage and an outbuilding for storing antiques for their business. The summer kitchen entry was raised by one story to house an office upstairs and an improved bathroom/laundry area below. The cedar shake roof was replaced with metal after severe hail damage several years ago. They built a patio and walkway around the house with 10,000 cobblestones and added to the landscaping by replacing dead trees, planting many shrubs, and adding a large flower/vegetable garden.

The current owners graciously allowed me to visit Coleman House in early spring this year. I went with my cousin, Karen, who had lived there with her mother, father, sister, and our grandmother.

It was wonderful to see the changes from “then to now”. Coleman House was truly saved after 1985. It was revitalized to modern living standards and new generations continue adding to its legacy. Restorations that took decades of vision and a tremendous outlay of work enhance the original beauty of James Ming’s craftsmanship from almost two centuries ago.

ADDENDUM 3

Added Coulter Lore with Pics

Coulter family, circa 1937

Standing left to right: Bessie Mae (Bess or Betty), Joseph Clayton (Joe), Effie Lavina (Fifi), Andrew Joseph (Joe), Ethel Ann (Nicky), Dorothy Jane (Dot) Seated left to right: Jacqueline Elise (Jack or Jackie), Frances Lee (Lee)

Fifi Coulter Coleman dressed up, in summer

*Final musings about my grandmother.

When I began this research, I wasn’t thinking about the work-a-day life for women in my grandmother’s era. It was overwhelming by anyone’s standards. Over the span of 17 years, Effie bore 5 girls and 1 boy in a bedroom at home and raised them almost singlehandedly. Her husband, a middle-aged man who provided for the family, was uninvolved in household life. Grampa Joe was known to sit in his chair reading the newspaper with a spittoon at his feet, seemingly oblivious to the chaos of six children running circles around him. Added to that workload was the daily care and feeding of a mother-in-law who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, get out of bed for the last 20 years of her life. And then, after early marriages, several daughters lived at home bringing their husbands until finding other living arrangements.

The overall picture of Fifi’s life looked like this: The full management of a large household with six children underfoot, a disconnected, but working husband, a mother-in-law who decided to stay in bed for 20 years, taking in boarders for extra money, and adult daughters moving in and out with spouses.

Perhaps John Coleman saved Fifi by wooing her out to the farm where she only had one man to worry about.

The Poetry of Space

March 7, 2021October 8, 2025 / wendyulfers / 18 Comments

Your home has to be a refuge, the place you come back to after the world has done all the things it has done to you, where you can be truly yourself, power out, refuel. It should feel good every time you walk in the door. –Amanda Dameron

One year into the Covid-19 pandemic, where spending more time at home has been the norm, the importance of home space, how we create it, how we live in it, what it means, seems a timely topic.

Quarantine has redefined the rhythms of life at home. It has provided different ways to think about and use space. It’s not only about structure, but also light and air, comfort, privacy and intimacy in a place where we can safely talk, think, do, or just be.

colorado cabin, by elizabeth zareh, 2020

…as a child, I always wanted to be in other people’s houses. Now, though still fascinated by those other houses, I am only really comfortable and relaxed in my own. My house is like a garment, made to my exact measurements, draped around me in the way I like… –Margaret Forster

My interest in houses and interior spaces began in childhood. In a small town suburb of a mid-western city, my mother would pile my younger sister and me into the backseat of the station wagon whenever she visited a friend outside our neighborhood. I never refused to go. I knew we would drive past a certain house, on curvy Big Bend Road, where my imaginary friend Cindy lived. And every time we drove by, I said aloud, “Look, there’s Cindy’s house!”

Imaginary friends weren’t an option–they were essential. –Emory Ann, 23 Things Only Children Know to be True

I made up this friend, gave her a name, and pretended to call her on the phone from the car because there was something I loved about that particular house, shaded by tall trees on a curved lot. I wanted to run to the door and be invited to play with a friend who didn’t exist. In my eight-year-old mind, I even imagined living in this cottage-like home with people I didn’t know.

Like the body itself, a home is something both looked at and lived in.…it is an image, an idea, a goal; perhaps as it was for my mother…it has filtered down to me. –Rachel Cusk

It is common to find a family link in people who care about how they live, what their space looks like, how it feels to others. Often it begins in an environment during childhood, emulating a relative’s sense of design and comfort in the home. Sometimes it comes from other early life experiences.

I spoke with a sampling of family and friends about how their interest developed in creating a home that both nurtured them and resonated with others. I asked for a recollection or anecdote when they knew that space, of a certain style, just so, would be important for the rest of their lives.

Responses varied from a childhood obsession for re-arranging furniture in a tiny bedroom until it felt right, to sewing curtains, bedspreads and pillows to create a signature space. Others spoke of a fascination with miniature rooms in doll houses, or a teenage bedroom on the top floor of a Victorian house with a sink built into the closet, or annually setting up a primitive cabin in a summer boys’ camp.

My friend Marilyn Larson wrote a beautiful memory about playing with her younger sister on the family farm in southern Minnesota. In a small grove of trees, they carefully raked the ground and removed debris in preparation for setting up rooms for a home. Each room was given a name designated by purpose, furnished with orange crates, lumber, or broken implements scavenged outside the barn. Sometimes they played “restaurant” by setting up a counter on a long plank of wood dragged from the junk pile, accessorized with broken dishes. They served homemade “mud cakes” and tried to entice their brother to buy one.

My brother-in-law Erik, a professional designer, has two memorable stories. The first was when he carved the skyline of New York City into the pine headboard of the bed his father had just built. Only six-years-old, using pointy scissors and ballpoint pens as primitive tools, he was proud of the creation of what he thought New York might look like. His parents were not impressed. He also secreted clear plastic food containers from the kitchen to an empty neighborhood field where he spent hours constructing houses, buildings and towns in the open, weedy landscape. His mother had no appreciation for this either. But he was onto something that evolved into a life of designing and building sets and spaces for theater, television, and corporations.

Frank Lloyd Wright, whose work organically synced with nature, was influenced by space as a boy. His schoolteacher mother bought a set of educational blocks created by the German educator, Friedrich Froebel. These geometrically shaped blocks were designed to teach children about form and relationship to nature. Wright remembers being fascinated by them, assembling shapes and compositions for hours at a time. He credited them for kindling his creative mind toward architectural design.

…there is no true understanding of any art without some knowledge of its philosophy. Only then does its’ meaning come clear. –Frank Lloyd Wright

Considering houses as art forms, Wright suggests that to really understand them they should be viewed philosophically. But it was a book by Gaston Bachelard that first started me thinking about houses metaphorically.

Gaston Bachelard [1884-1962] was a French philosopher from the last century. His idea of the house as poetic space that holds memories and opens portals to dreams and imagination is timeless.

Bachelard uses the image of houses “as a tool for analysis of the human soul”. Simplified, the house is the container that shelters our body, which is the container for our inner life. To access inner life requires daydreaming. In order to daydream we need solitary time. With solitary time, we learn to love “the space inside us”, the creative dreaming place. Learning to happily “abide” within ourselves while in the shelter of the house is poetry, because the house is in us as much as we are in it.

What does this mean?

The house, a physical space, provides shelter for us to dream and make memories. These dreams and memories are held in our unconscious, a metaphysical place. Remembering dreams is easier with connection to an actual space. When the house offers places to curl up, in solitude, such as nooks and crannies, window seats, attics and garrets, one’s own bedroom, there are built-in places to think and dream and create. The circle of house around us housing the soul within us is poetry.

Bachelard says children must be allowed time to daydream. They need to learn to love being alone and, at times, even bored. Solitary time opens and invites new thinking in unexpected ways–just as poetry does. Time alone teaches children to live within themselves, too. Inside their daydreams is where they experience the immensity of imagining worlds within worlds.

The house protects the dreamer. The houses that are important to us are the ones that allow us to dream in peace. –Gaston Bachelard

The house you were “born in” is your first space of material warmth, protection and rest. It is imprinted in a place in the subconscious that you may or may not return to in dreams. If we dream about houses they are often not easily described by words. There’s where the poetry comes in.

In the house I was born into, my older sister had the best room. Her bedroom was underneath the roof. To the right, at the top of the stairs, was an aromatic cedar closet where seasonal clothes were stored. To the left, down a narrow hallway was the door to her room. The walls and ceiling were honey colored pine and the ceiling angled like a triangle from the peak. Low walls ran along both sides with cubbyhole doors that hid spaces further under the eaves. There was a tiny closet with low hanger bars and a narrow shelf for folded clothes. The only window opened to a flat roof over the front porch. It was forbidden to go out there because you might “fall through” the unsupported porch ceiling. But I learned that my sister crawled out the window to climb onto the higher roof and [secretly] smoke with her friends.

When she was away, I lay on her bed, stared into the peak, re-arranged the furniture in my head, and imagined how I would live if this were my space. Eventually I had a claim to the coveted room when it was time for her to go to university. But then my father took a job in a different state. And that perfect bedroom nest, which I never fully inhabited, still recurs in my nighttime dreams. [With the addition of a bathroom through the back wall of the closet invented by my subconscious.]

Our house is our corner of the world…it is our first universe. If looked at intimately–even the humblest dwelling is beautiful. –Gaston Bachelard

All inhabited space is essentially the notion of home. A house doesn’t necessarily have to be the shelter opening the doorway to creativity and dreaming. A hermit’s hut, a childhood bedroom, a tent in the woods, the car on a road trip, a favorite hike, a deep soaking bathtub, a tree next to a river–places where we can be alone are also conduits to accessing “inside” spaces where we think and dream and create. Even the humblest, most primitive space can be this place.

You have to filter out stale ideas that your mother gave you about how you should live, or what you should have in your space. Does it have to do with you, or not? –Interior designer, New York Times

My mother had a knack for making houses into homes. She intuitively knew how things should be arranged and was true to her own tastes for creating comfort in the places I grew up. She was on the sidelines with advice as I began experimenting with my own living spaces.

The time came when we both realized that choices going forward needed to be mine and not hers. One birthday she gave me a clear glass ginger jar lamp stuffed with white seashells. The shade had accordion pleats the color of beige sand. I didn’t say I hated it, but it had nothing to do with me. It was her idea of a cool accessory. So I diplomatically said I didn’t want a lamp as much as I wanted a professional bread knife with serrated edges. She kept the lamp. I got the knife. Future gifts were checks.

My first apartment living alone was in Madison, Wisconsin on the top floor of a house across the street from Lake Monona. It had a glassed-in porch that looked into trees on the lake shore. The bed was a saggy mattress on top of bouncy coil springs hauled down from the attic one floor above. I arranged green trees and plants for window treatments, hammered Indian cotton tapestries to the walls to hide plaster cracks, and covered splintery floors with funky patchwork rugs. There was no bedroom door so I tacked up a curtain of wooden beads that clinked and swayed in long strands. It was perfect.

Marriage followed with several changes in geography in the U.S. Eventually we made the decision to move overseas. Different stories accumulated while living in five countries over the next 30 years. Apartments or houses in Singapore, Cyprus, Taiwan, Germany and France were woven together by the layout of affordable space that fit our family and by treasures we collected from each place we lived. There were always challenges while adapting to a new job, unfamiliar languages and cultures. But whatever the outside world threw at us, when we crossed the threshold of each dwelling we breathed in familiar sights and scents. It was our space, our comfort, our sanctuary, our home.

courtyard and house in oberursel germany, paris apartment in 16th arrondissement

My artist friend, Catherine Ventura whom I met in Taiwan, said it best, “I make familiar spaces in unfamiliar places.” We all did.

The ideal of happiness has always taken material form in the house, whether cottage or castle. It stands for permanence and separation from the world. –Simone de Beauvoir

Frances Schultz recovered from a failed relationship and missteps in mid-life by buying and renovating a tiny dilapidated cottage with good bones. She wrote a therapeutic memoir, The Bee Cottage Story, about healing herself with the power and creativity of making a beautiful home.

There are no rules about how a house becomes a home. It requires thought, time and attention, and putting your stamp on it by living in the space. As far as decorating, Schultz advises intuition; “If it feels right, it probably is. If it doesn’t, it isn’t. Instincts are not wrong. Ignoring them is…when a space is right for you; there is an instinctive response to it–an intuitive sense of how you would live there, where your things would go, what you would keep, and what you would change. It’s a project, not a struggle.”

Ruth Bender, a long time friend, wrote these thoughts; “Making a home is a mentally engaging and creative gift to oneself. It is an expression of love to those we are lucky enough to actually be with and to those dear ones who are gone or far away.”

Houses that become homes are like a poem. They have structure that represents how we want to live in the world. They shelter our feelings for people and surroundings we love. And if the home is nourishing to the soul and allows expression of the “inner self”, then we are fortunate to have created our own poetry of space.

…believe that place is fate. Where you are is who you are. The further inside you the place moves, the more your identity is entwined with it. Never casual, the choice of place is the choice of something you crave. –Frances Mayes

Brave Enough

January 21, 2021April 6, 2023 / wendyulfers / 18 Comments

It seems that every four years I am moved from writing personal stories to a subject that resonates in the current moment. The 2021 inaugural ceremony for the 46^th President of the United States provided the moment. Specifically, Amanda Gorman’s recitation of her poem written for the occasion entitled, “The Hill We Climb”. Her words left me without any. I was overcome with emotion, and then hope.

Amanda Gorman is our National Youth Poet Laureate. She is the youngest person to write and present an inaugural poem on the steps of the Capitol in Washington, DC. Her message is one of resilience and recovery, of democracy’s imperfect, unfinished business. It requires bravery and stamina to weather inherent storms in America’s form of democracy. It requires courage and contribution to promote the work of systemic change.

Amanda spoke of the ability, after a period of disconnection and chaos, to collectively re-form as a nation of Americans, rather than a nation of divisions.

The fact that a twenty-two-year-old authored such beautiful, powerfully emotive words was, for me, the essence of her moment in the spotlight. It is this brand of inspiration which the younger generations bring to the table that will move us forward. Gandhi said, “Be the change you wish to see.” In Amanda’s words:

“If we’re to live up to our own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made. That is the promised glade, the hill we climb, if only we dare it.

Because being an American is more than a pride we inherit–It’s the past we step into, and how we repair it.”

Gorman is also part actor. Her interpretive recitation of “The Hill We Climb”, at the close of the inauguration, was punctuated with alliterative emphasis, emotion, gesture, rap and rhyme. Hamilton fans will recognize illusions to Lin Manuel-Miranda’s way with history, words, and meter:

“In this truth, in this faith we trust. For while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us.”

Amanda Gorman is more than a talented poet of her generation. She understands the power of words, their lasting effect, whether written or spoken. She believes in words as a catalyst for change. Poetry is her medium.

As part of a peaceful transition of power in America, an inauguration ritual is enacted with every new administration voted into office. It has been this way for more than 200 years. On January 20, 2021, Amanda Gorman revealed to the world, with cadence and crafting, that a shift in our country’s values will lead us to where we belong.

“We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be: a country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free.”

And finally,

“When day comes, we step out of the shade. Aflame and unafraid. The new dawn blooms as we free it. For there is always light, if we’re only brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.”

Amanda Gorman among a generation of many, ready to lean across the national divide with outstretched arms, is the future where I want to be.

THE HILL WE CLIMB by Amanda Gorman

When day comes, we ask ourselves: 
Where can we find light 
In this never-ending shade? 
The loss we carry, a sea we must wade. 

We braved the belly of the beast.
We've learned that quiet isn't always peace, 
And the norms and notions of what “just is" 
                                           Isn't always justice. 

And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it. 
                                         Somehow, we do it.
Somehow, we’ve weathered and witnessed 
A nation that isn't broken, but simply 
     unfinished.

We, the successors of a country and a time 
Where a skinny Black girl,
Descended from slaves and raised by a 
   single mother, 
Can dream of becoming president, 
Only to find herself reciting for one.

And yes, we are far from polished, 
    far from pristine. 
But that doesn't mean we're striving to 
    form a union that is perfect. 
We are striving to forge our union with 
   purpose, 

To compose a country committed
To all cultures, colors, characters,
And conditions of man. 
And so we lift our gazes not 
To what stands between us 
But what stands before us. 
We close the divide, 
Because we know to put
Our future first, we must first 
Put our differences aside.

We lay down our arms 
So we can reach our arms out to one 
    another. 
We seek harm to none, and harmony for all. 

Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true: 
That even as we grieved, we grew, 
That even as we hurt, we hoped,
That even as we tired, we tried. 
That we’ll forever be tied together. 
    Victorious, 
Not because we will never again know 
    defeat, 
But because we will never again sow division.

Scripture tells us to envision that: 
"Everyone shall sit under their own vine 
   and fig tree, 
And no one shall make them afraid."
If we’re to live up to our own time, then 
   victory 
Won't lie in the blade, but in all the bridges 
   we've made. 
That is the promised glade, 
The hill we climb, if only we dare it: 
Because being American is more than a 
   pride we inherit––
It's the past we step into, and how we 
   repair it. 

We've seen a force that would shatter our 
   nation rather than share it, 
Would destroy our country if it meant 
   delaying democracy. 
And this effort very nearly succeeded. 
But while democracy can be periodically 
   delayed, 
It can never be permanently defeated. 

In this truth, in this faith, we trust. 
For while we have our eyes on the future, 
History has its eyes on us.

This is the era of just redemption. 
We feared it at its inception. 
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs 
Of such a terrifying hour. 
But within it we've found the power 
To author a new chapter, 
To offer hope and laughter to ourselves.

So, while once we asked: How could we 
   possibly prevail over catastrophe? 
Now we assert:  How could catastrophe 
   possibly prevail over us?
 
We will not march back to what was, 
But move to what shall be: 
A country that is bruised but whole, 
Benevolent but bold, 
Fierce and free. 

We will not be turned around, 
Or interrupted by intimidation, 
Because we know our inaction and inertia 
Will be the inheritance of the next 
   generation. 
Our blunders become their burdens. 
But one thing is certain: 
If we merge mercy with might, and might 
   with right, 
Then love becomes our legacy, 
And change, our children's birthright.

So let us leave behind a country better 
   than the one we were left. 
With every breath from our bronze-
   pounded chests, 
We will raise this wounded world into 
   a wondrous one. 

We will rise from the gold-limned hills 
   of the West! 
We will rise from the windswept 
   Northeast, where our forefathers first 
   realized revolution! 
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities 
   of the Midwestern states!
We will rise from the sun-baked South! 

We will rebuild, reconcile and recover, 
In every known nook of our nation, 
In every corner called our country, 
Our people, diverse and dutiful. 
We'll emerge battered and beautiful.

When day comes, we step out of the 
   shade 
Aflame and unafraid.
The new dawn blooms as we free it, 
For there is always light, 
If only we're brave enough to see it. 
If only we're brave enough to be it.

“Let’s begin to listen to one another again. Hear one another, see one another. Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire, destroying everything in its path. Every disagreement doesn’t have to be a cause for total war.“

–President Joseph Biden

High Winds

November 18, 2020August 2, 2026 / wendyulfers / 18 Comments

As a mountain is unshaken
by the wind,
so the heart of the wise
person is unmoved
by all the changes 
on this earth.          
–Buddha

Summer 2020. July road trip from the mountains of Colorado to lake hopping in Wisconsin–cancelled. Coronavirus rampant worldwide and no vaccine, yet. While accepting the present moment, something needed shaking up.

A conversation about camping in early marriage led to the basement in search of gear. It was not what we remembered. There was an under sized tent–don’t think so, wafer thin sleeping pads–nope, one camp stove–completely rusted. Not much in the way of basics. However, a reliable looking percolator coffee pot and two fine sleeping bags revived hope and possibility. We headed to the nearest REI store to fill in the gaps.

An open sky half-domed tent, two self-inflating sleeping pads, and one tiny state-of-the-art stove later, we were ready to reconnect with outdoor living in mountain campground terrain.

September was late to get started. We hoped the fire ban, in place since July, would be lifted but instead it was extended. For good reasons. It’s almost obligatory to come home from camping and smell like campfire smoke. Not this season.

We scoped out sites in advance because reservations are mandatory. To “walk in” means setting up a tent next to the bathrooms. Our choice was a good one. We had neighbors to the right and left, but lodge pole pine forest behind.

Forgetting a few things prompted the start of a “next time” list. The night passed peacefully for husband who slept right through while I lay awake with a maddening bout of insomnia. Hours spent listening to night sounds–the tent-side scratching and rustling of small rodents. Later, there was a loud and persistent snuffling noise just north of sleeping man’s head. I chose to let him slumber on as I flipped over and over in my sleeping bag in hopes of urging away nocturnal critters, imagined or not.

In the morning, the aluminum coffee percolator worked like a charm.

A month later, we tried out new territory in the Arapahoe/Roosevelt National Forest. Within the forest is a huge expanse of land originally owned and used by Hewlett-Packard for employee recreation and leadership retreats. It has since become public space with large, natural, private campsites.

The mid-October day of our reservation began with cold rain, then sleet, and finally horizontal blowing snow. We watched and waited. Hours later, as often happens in Colorado, the sun was shining. Deciding that our tent and sleeping bags could withstand forecast colder temperatures and high winds, we headed out.

Campsite #38 in Hermit Park is isolated and beautiful. Late autumn golden-leafed aspens, craggy rocks, boulders, and pine trees surrounded the tent. Metal stakes and rocks kept things battened down as the predicted wind picked up with attention getting gusts. Yet again, we were underprepared. This time–no warm gloves, no insulated footwear, no heavy coats. Temperatures dipped even before darkness fell.

Only 25-minutes from home, I volunteered to collect missing gear so we could see the night through. Upon return, husband was stamping in circles to keep warm. It was time to open the wine and get the stove fired up. Hands and feet were toasty and battery lanterns lit up the dusk as night settled in, even without a campfire.

Homemade chili heated in vintage cast iron warmed our insides. Finally, with the wind blowing in breathtaking gusts, an empty wine bottle, and total darkness, we looked at each other and laughed. The tent was an easy invitation to turn in.

All night the wind moaned, circled and doubled back relentlessly. But we were snug as bugs. This time, the only outside noises were buffeting tent flaps noted briefly before turning over and settling back to sleep under layers of cozy warmth.

Husband was up at early light to get the coffee started. It was a feat of expertise to keep the stove lit and protected from the high wind. But he did. Emerging from the tent, I took a photo of the moon above the trees.

We cheered when the pot finally began percolating. Coffee was steaming and strong. Continental breakfast, camp style, was s’mores bars dipped in tin mugs. [recipe: Guest Ready Sweetness]

We could have stayed home. We could have sat by an indoor fire in a heated cabin with candles on the coffee table. But a pandemic with ongoing caution to remain hunkered down and distant from others invited us into the wilderness.

So we found ourselves pitching a tent, in a remote campsite, in inclement weather, inside a slice of time with no past or future, only the present. A late autumn afternoon turned into evening, and then a new day.

We chose to go deeper into the mountains and sleep on the ground with high winds as our companion. And while there, we let go and breathed deeply in the midst of life’s uncertainty.

Climb the mountains and 
get their good tidings.
Nature’s peace will flow into you 
as sunshine flows through trees.
The wind will blow freshness into you,
and cares will drop away 
like leaves of Autumn. 
–John Muir

Guest Ready Sweetness

October 13, 2020June 23, 2023 / wendyulfers / 10 Comments

smoky mountain views in RMNP [drone photo by Jeremiah Green]

To say it has been an atypical summer in the mountains is an understatement. Forest fires burning around us since July, ash and haze obscuring mountain outlines, no rain in three months, statewide fire ban, surging global pandemic, and a lack of visitors except for children and grandchildren.

playing with sticks around the unused fire ring, bro/sis time before bed

I’m more than ready for next season’s return to normalcy if it works out that way. By ready, I mean that I have three exceptional recipes to satisfy the sweet tooth of any person or group that drops by, sits around a campfire, or stays overnight.

idle campfire ring [drone photo by Jeremiah Green]

Maddy’s Caramel Bars, Patricia’s Double Chocolate Brownies with Sea Salt, and Jean’s S’mores Bars are unbeatable for chewable bites of sweetness cut out of a 9×13 inch-baking pan.

As all great passed-on recipes should be, these come from stories about friends.

Last summer’s road trip in 2019 was to Maddy and Cabby’s cabin on the Methow River [A Guest Room Under the Porch] in eastern Washington State. Maddy is a great cook and hostess. Their log home, with overflow teepees and tents, is a revolving door of family and friends. She offered us her always-on-the-counter pan of caramel bars and said, “Try these. People love them! They are my go-to for company all summer long.” We sampled and agreed. Caramel bars with chocolate chips and pecans were prepared over and over for our own guests, with rave reviews.

cool in the pan before cutting — cool completely before cutting

caramel bars — cool completely before cutting

Patricia, whom I have written about in several adventures, Cocoa Cake With My Curry, Please, Sunshine on the Back of Your Knees] vacationed in Colorado in August. She rented a cabin bordering on the National Park just down the road from us. The double chocolate brownies she brought to our front porch originated from a friend in Wisconsin. Richly chewy, with texture from chocolate chips inside, these brownies are for every chocoholic. I switched out the garnish of powdered sugar for flaky sea salt sprinkled over the top. Et maintenant ç’est plus délicieux. Chocolate and salt can’t be beat. Except by caramel and salt. Or almost anything with salt.

double chocolate brownies with flakes of sea salt — double chocolate brownies with sea salt

The last recipe came onto the scene this summer because of the harsh no burn season. We invited neighbors for a socially-distanced outdoor cookout around the fire ring. S’mores were requested for dessert. Except a campfire couldn’t be lit. Our friend, Jean, came bearing S’mores Bars baked in the oven and cut into bite-sized squares. These are even better than real s’mores, which often feature charred marshmallows blackened over red-hot coals.

With baked s’mores you can revisit the original in one chewy, not overly sweet, bite of marshmallow and chocolate chip cookie dough over a graham cracker crust. There is melted chocolate on top so licking fingers is required. I substituted dark chocolate for traditional milk chocolate. [S’more better.]

I’m anticipating the return of a next summer’s season of sequential guests. This winter while I drink coffee next to the picture window with the wide angle view of Long’s Peak, I will muse about the return of daily summer afternoon rainstorms followed by rainbows, campfires by sunrise, sunset, or moonrise, and baking pans full of dessert bars to sweeten everything that happens in between.

CARAMEL BARS [Maddy Hewitt]

First Layer:

1 C melted butter
1 C flour
1 C oats
1 C brown sugar
1 ¼ tsp baking soda

Combine dry ingredients in a bowl. Pour melted butter over and mix in. Reserve ¼ of the mixture for topping. Pat the rest into bottom of a 9 x 13 inch baking pan. Bake 15 min. at 350 F. Cool 5-10 min.

line up of ingredients, first layer pressed into bottom of pan

Second Layer:

1 bag Kraft Caramels, wrappers removed
3 ½ Tbs butter
3 Tbs cream [or Half & Half]

Melt all together, SLOWLY, in cast iron skillet over low heat. Stir constantly. When melted, pour over cooled crust.

Third Layer:

1 C semi sweet chocolate chips [or dark chocolate chips]
¼ to ½ C pecan pieces

Mix together and sprinkle over caramel layer

reserved crust mixture for 4th layer is sprinkled over top of chips and pecan layer

Fourth Layer:

Using reserved crust mixture, sprinkle over the top of chips and pecans

Bake 10 min. more at 350 F. Allow to cool completely before cutting. Store in tins. Freezes well.

DOUBLE CHOCOLATE BROWNIES WITH SEA SALT FLAKES [Patricia Green-Sotos]

4 oz. unsweetened chocolate
1 C butter
2 C granulated sugar
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 C flour
12 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 ½ C miniature marshmallows
Flaky sea salt crystals

Melt chocolate and butter slowly in a saucepan over low heat. When melted, add sugar and set aside to cool slightly. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Stir in vanilla and flour. Mix well. Fold in chips and marshmallows.

melting chocolate and butter over low heat

beat in eggs, add chips and marshmallows

spread into parchment paper lined pan, sprinkle with sea salt after baking

Bake in a parchment paper lined 9 x 13 baking pan [or grease the pan] for 30-35 minutes at 350 F. Top may be bubbly. Don’t overcook. Sprinkle with sea salt flakes and cool completely before cutting. Store in tins or plastic ware. Freezes great.

S’MORES BARS [Jean Adam]

Crust:

1 ½ sleeves graham crackers, crushed with rolling pin in zip-loc bag
2/3 C melted butter
1/3 C granulated sugar

Mix together and press into bottom of 9×13” pan lined with parchment paper. Bake 7 min at 350 F. Cool slightly.

Cookie Top:

1 C butter softened to room temperature
¾ C brown sugar
¾ C white sugar
1 tsp vanilla

Cream together. Add:

2 eggs

Stir in:

2 ¼ C flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda

Mix in:

1 C semi-sweet or dark chocolate chips
2 ½ C mini marshmallows

drop clumps of cookie dough layer over crust, then gently press to sides of pan

Drop by large spoonfuls of dough carefully over crust and press into graham crackers without disturbing the layer underneath. Bake 15 min at 350 F or until golden brown on top. Quickly remove from oven and cover the top with broken pieces of Hershey’s dark chocolate bars. [2 large ones or 3 small]

Return to oven until chocolate melts ~ 3-5 min. Don’t overcook or let the top get too brown.

place broken chocolate bars over baked cookie dough layer

Cool completely before lifting parchment out of pan and cutting into small squares.

Refrigerate to slightly harden. Freezes well.

Summer’s End…

“It was now one of those moments when nothing remains but an opening in the sky and a story–and maybe something of a poem.”
–Norman Maclean, “USFS 1919-The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the Sky” from
A River Runs Through It

Rain Happened

September 1, 2020August 1, 2026 / wendyulfers / 31 Comments

It’s late summer in Estes Park, Colorado. Smoky haze from surrounding forest fires has begun to subside. Afternoon rain showers precede lower temperatures day and night. A bugling elk was heard from the open window last night. Change of season is near.

Sunday afternoon. We spontaneously headed into Rocky Mountain National Park. A picnic supper was packed, and we set out to an undetermined location for sunset watching and contemplative time.

This wasn’t our first venture in improvising an outing at the last minute. But it turned out to be a memorable one.

Moraine Park is a vast landscape with 360-degree wide-angle views. Elk herds typically congregate here during the rut, covering wide swaths of the meadow. It is still early for this so we looked for a scenic place to set up temporary camp.

The Big Thompson River flows east through Moraine Park, gurgling and sparkling and encouraging fishermen to cast lines in late afternoon sun. We spied an empty sandbar and a trail leading there. Pulling over, we walked to the water’s edge.

The sandbar was wide and pebbled with small and medium sized rocks. Clear, shallow water curled around with soothing sounds. There were tall green reeds on the far side, shining in the sun, waving in the breeze. The river is narrow here but cold, as expected of mountain run-off streams.

Green folding camp chairs, a small oak table, a cooler and a basket of food completed the set up. We settled in and began with a toast to the sunset, to the high peaks, to living in such an incredibly beautiful natural environment, and to each other.

Up river from us, backlit by sunlight, a fly fisherman cast again and again. His wet line glistened and lashed out like horizontal lightening. It was perhaps too breezy for trout to bite, but the silhouette of his attempt was lovely.

Husband indulged with homemade pizza taken from the oven just before leaving home. There was farmer’s market arugula as salad on top. And, there was champagne because bubbles create an optimal accompaniment with pizza. [Champagne: “Tasting the Stars”] [Wait Twenty Minutes Then Add Salt] A square of dark bittersweet chocolate accompanied last sips.

Clouds formed between the sinking sun and western mountains. Breezes blew them south and then new ones took their place. We settled in to see what would happen.

Rain happened. A misty, silky, spotty rain destined to subside quickly. Reluctantly we began to pack up.

Then, the almost certain finale to showers in the mountains lit up the sky behind us–a full rainbow that touched the meadow on both ends.

There it was–nature’s beautiful end to a serendipitous outing. It gave us more than we expected on a late August evening.

Of Twins and ‘Tinis

May 10, 2020September 12, 2024 / wendyulfers / 19 Comments

It is not economical to go to bed early to save candles if the result is twins. –Chinese Proverb

There is something about a Martini, a tingle remarkably pleasant, a yellow, a mellow Martini, I wish I had one at present. –Ogden Nash

Twins and martinis are an interesting study of compare and contrast.

I’m married to an identical twin. He is ten minutes older than his brother. They learned to speak the mother tongue on the normal developmental curve, but retained a private language from the time they were infants until four-years-old.

Look at identical twins. When you get closer, you start to see the small differences. –Brian Swanson

Placed in different classrooms in elementary school, their interests and friends diverged. One gravitated toward sports, fishing, and camping, the other to art, music, and drama. As adults, it is easy to identify who is who because hair parts are on opposite sides and voices differ, but they use identical hand gestures and are both creative leaders in their respective professions.

Not even identical twins can have the exact same experiences and their brains are not wired the same way. –John Medina

There are significant differences in food and taste preference in these twins. My husband’s brother eats coriander, both raw and cooked, while my husband turns away from any food with a hint of it. In childhood, one twin developed a food allergy to shellfish, the other to fish with fins.

Then I stumbled onto the great martini divide, placing them firmly into polarized camps…

I’m not talking a cup of cheap gin splashed over an ice cube. I’m talking satin, fire, and ice, surgical cleanliness, insight and comfort, redemption and absolution. I’m talking MARTINI. –Anonymous

In the late 1990s, my brother-in-law, Erik, joined colleagues after work at a bar conveniently located on the ground floor of their office building in New York City. Martini culture was popular, and an architect he knew always ordered one. The bartender used a small aerosol bottle to spray vermouth inside the glass. Then he added a 50/50 ratio of gin and vodka. It was a memorable first martini because my brother-in-law despised it. Later, when he decided to try again, there was the same essence of vermouth spray followed by chilled vodka only. Thereafter, his go-to cocktail was born.

During the same time period we were living overseas. My husband never drank distilled liquor, preferring wine or beer as a social beverage. Then, last summer in Colorado I began experimenting with “dirty” vodka martinis as a late-in-the-day-cabin-cocktail. He turned up his nose and stuck with wine. Dabbling with other recipes, I mixed vodka and gin. He agreed to taste, but only tolerated a few sips before a decided, “No thank you”. Several months later, experimenting again, I offered a pure gin concoction and substituted Lillet [a French aperitif wine from Bordeaux] for vermouth. He surprised us both by saying, “This could be my martini.” He is also big on many green olives as garnish.

And so, with ongoing research, I discerned a new difference–to each twin, his own base spirit.

The iconic martini is never completely out of style. Yet it could be the most argued about drink in history because it comes in such a variety of variations. Amazing for a cocktail with only three parts:

1. Base alcohol
2. The ratio of spirit to vermouth
3. Garnish

Seemingly simple, yet every martini must be carefully created. Often it’s better not to order one in public. Most bartenders, unless you instruct them carefully, don’t have the time or inclination to make it to personal specifications. There is no right or wrong recipe. It’s just that the best martini is one made the way you like to drink it. Begin mixing at home.

If someone says they hate martinis, it’s possible they never had a proper one. The disgruntlement is most often not with the gin or vodka. It is usually with the concentration of vermouth.

A perfect martini should be made by filling a chilled glass with gin then waving it in the general direction of Italy. –Noël Coward

For many martini lovers, the “right” proportion of vermouth to spirit is more art than science. An exact measurement can be difficult when it is more like a hint or a suggestion. Like the spritz my brother-in-law sprays inside his glass. Or the way Dukes Hotel Bar in London pours vermouth in and then out of the glass. Whatever sticks inside is just enough. A fraction of the whole, the vermouth ratio can define or ruin a martini depending on your taste.

Vermouth should be used quickly. Some sources say within a month. Toss out those years-old-dusty-bottles on a shelf. Keep it cold. Never buy icky vermouth. Buy the smallest bottle of the best quality [not Martini & Rossi] and make great martinis.

The vermouth dilemma was solved in our home by ditching it entirely. We only use white Lillet. One measure of this French invention offers smoothness not tasted with vermouth. I don’t know if vermouth really goes bad after a month, perhaps it’s that we don’t like it, but Lillet keeps in the refrigerator for a long time and is always just right. The point is, to each his own proportion of spirit to vermouth, or to Lillet, or to none. I have a friend who loves her martini with only the taste of good, icy, shaken vodka unadulterated by vermouth or Lillet. Olives and ice chips as garnish.

It was Ian Fleming who introduced me to the idea of using Lillet. In the 1953 novel, Casino Royale, James Bond invents the “Vesper”, named for a short-lived girlfriend:

“A dry martini,” he [Bond] said. “One. In a deep champagne goblet.”

“Oui, monsieur.”

“Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it’s ice-cold then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?”

“Certainly, monsieur.” The barman seemed pleased with the idea.

“Gosh, that’s certainly a drink,” said Leiter.

Bond laughed. “When I’m…er…concentrating,” he explained, “I never have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that one to be large and very strong and very cold, and very well made. I hate small portions of anything, particularly when they taste bad. This drink’s my own invention. I’m going to patent it when I can think of a good name.”

–Ian Fleming, Casino Royale, Chapter 7, “Rouge et Noir”

It was in Dukes Hotel, on tiny St. James Place, Mayfair London, where Fleming regularly consumed vodka martinis while writing his infamous 007 spy stories. Today, Dukes’ bar is an institution with an established reputation for great martinis. Head bartender, Alessandro Palazzi, is Italian and has worked there for more than three decades. He says, “A martini is a drink that has to be strong and three ingredients only.” No chocolate, no espresso, no fruit additions make the cut. Their current signature drink has been around since the mid-1980s. Dukes is known for using a direct martini method, cutting out ice as middleman. After a thin wash of vermouth, already frozen gin or vodka is poured like syrup directly from bottle into glass.

alessandro palazzi at dukes hotel, london

There are martini snobs today who claim that Fleming’s British spy ruined the cocktail with his standard “shaken not stirred” preparation and for ordering vodka instead of straight gin. It’s remarkable that people not only target a fictional character with a cocktail crime, but that martinis still provoke argument 100+ years after being invented.

A martini should always be stirred, not shaken, so the molecules lie sensuously on top of one another. –Somerset Maughan

If you belong to the stirring-only-fan-club, mix ingredients in a container with ice for 30 seconds to bind and thoroughly chill. It will only be diluted a touch. If you shake, use plenty of ice and keep going until shaker is frosted over, your hand is frozen to the metal, and/or you feel a decent upper body workout. For the unprofessional occasional imbiber there is no discernible difference in taste or chill factor with either method. We tend to go the shaken route because we like sipping through a sea of ice shards on top.

Whether shaken or stirred, the “have to” of every martini is that it must be served extremely COLD.

The real key to a great martini is it should be all arctic, deliciously crisp… –Victoria Moore

Glassware can be freezer chilled or let ice cubes rest inside while ingredients are assembled. Also, consider the allure of the glass. A long stemmed V-shaped martini glass looks better in your hand than any other drinking receptacle. [Except a champagne flute!] The conical shape allows olives to stand upright rather than clump unattractively in a heap. The stem protects cold glass from warm hands. The wide bowl opens the alcohol to air and makes it pleasantly aromatic, especially with gin.

glass freezer chilled or iced for several minutes

This is an excellent martini – sort of tastes…just like a cold cloud. –Herman Wouk

Dueling twin tastes in our family parallel the general public debate between classical gin martini lovers versus those who drink only vodka. I went to my own double sources to learn why each side aligns so dramatically one way or another.

Brother-in-law enjoys the peppery taste that certain vodka emits. Ketel One for everyday, Christiania–Norwegian potato vodka–on special occasions. He likes one spray of vermouth in his glass, replicating the method of the bartender who made his first martini. He believes gin tastes like fertilizer or moldy leaf compost.

Husband who prefers gin says it has substance and tastes like earthy herbs and spices that linger on the palate. His current favorite is Fords Gin, known for its juniper essence, but cites Botanist and Bombay Sapphire, too. He likes a martini laced with Lillet rather than vermouth. He believes vodka tastes like lighter fluid.

There you have it–true twin diversity in taste and preference, martini style. To finish the story, two final quotes from two favorite writers:

I had never tasted anything so cool and clean. They made me feel civilized. –Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

A well-made martini correctly chilled and nicely served has been more often my friend than any two-legged creature. –M.F.K. Fisher

Civilized or not, friendly or not, it’s wise to be slightly scared of martinis. This is not a girly wine spritzer you can swill in multiple rounds when thirsty. This is an adult drink, a serious drink. It is a pond of pure booze in a glass and should be treated as such. For most of us, who inhabit a world with both civility and friendship, one martini is probably enough. Unless you happen to be drinking with twins…then, better make it a double.

4 MARTINI RECIPES

[Shaken or stirred, or eliminate ice with frozen gin or vodka & a very well chilled glass]

THE 007 VESPERTINI

[Disclosure: Impossible to replicate exactly as Bond created. Why? Gordon’s gin in 1953 was not the same gin as by that name now. Kina Lillet is no longer made either. Use a strong rather than a soft gin, Stoli vodka, white Lillet and a dash of bitters for the closest approximation.]

2 shots gin of choice
1 shot vodka [100 proof Stoli preferably]
½ shot white Lillet
Optional: 2 dashes bitters
Always shaken
Garnish with large twist of lemon peel

THE SIGNATURE LONDON DUKES HOTEL MARTINI

Rinse a well-chilled glass with dry vermouth by pouring in and out
Add 5 shots [oh my!] of frozen gin or vodka
Express the oil from the peel of an organic, un-waxed Italian Amalfi Coast lemon over the top and then drop in as garnish
House rule–maximum 2 drinks allowed
Served with olives and snacks on the side
Customer has table rights all evening

THE MARK GINTINI

3 shots Fords or Botanist Gin
1 shot white Lillet
Always shaken
Garnish with minimum of 3 green olives
Float ice chips over the top

THE ERIK VODKATINI

1 spray vermouth to inside of glass
3 shots Ketel One or Christiania Vodka
Always shaken
Garnish with lemon peel or burnt blood orange peel, olives if you must

There are two things in life for which we are never truly prepared…twins. –Josh Billings

Quarantine Comfort Food

April 17, 2020August 1, 2026 / wendyulfers / 15 Comments

It’s the middle of April. There is eighteen inches of snow outside our cabin in the Rocky Mountains. It’s stay-in-place quarantine time so there is nowhere to go anyway.

We watched a coyote run by in the early morning hours yesterday, on the hunt for something to fill his stomach, followed by four more.

Today, a family of deer bedded down among the pine trees on the southern hillside. What we actually saw was heads and ears, their bodies completely blanketed in white powder like a downy duvet.

The pine needles are so heavily laden that they create avalanches when they unburden themselves from the top, cascading down through lower branches in bulky snow burst plops.

All of this is pretty to look upon, but we must occasionally venture from the fireplace to don boots and hats and gloves and shovel out the drive, now a pileup growing foot by foot instead of inch by inch. Back inside, we shake off the snow and head to the kitchen. It’s time to refuel with something hot, hearty, and with ingredients almost always on hand.

Our quarantine comfort food go-to is an improved reboot of a childhood staple; grilled cheese sandwiches. But this is not some processed-cheese-slices-between-layers-of-white-bread kind of sandwich. I’m talking Grilled Cheese. With caramelized onions, bacon, and fresh spinach [or apples].

It’s a simple how-to with satisfying returns.

GRILLED CHEESE WITH CARAMELIZED ONIONS [and More]

Ingredients:

1 whole large onion, halved and sliced thinly
Good Butter
Grated mix of meltable cheeses such as Gruyere, cheddar, or whatever is on hand
Thick sliced bacon, if desired, or use crisp apple in thinly sliced wedges
Fresh baby spinach
4 slices hearty bread such as rye or sourdough

Preparation:

Fry bacon slices [if using], set aside, and drain grease from pan.
Add some butter to heavy skillet [cast iron!] and slowly sauté sliced onions over med-lo heat. Onions will brown slowly. Stir occasionally. It can take 20 minutes, so be patient. The crucial step is to caramelize those onions!
Place grated cheese in bowl.
Add the browned onions and mix together thoroughly.
Pile onion/cheese mix onto each slice of bread.
Top with bacon [optional] and spinach. For a meatless version substitute very thin slices of raw apple for the bacon.
Press sandwich halves together.
In cast iron skillet, place sandwich into melted butter and heat to grill bread on both sides. It’s helpful to press down with heavy spatula to squish insides together. Turn over carefully.
When bread is toast-y and cheese is melt-y, serve at once.

*taking raw onions to caramelized sweetness*

*mix hot onions with grated cheese, spread onion/cheese on bread, top with bacon & spinach*

*grill sandwich in melted butter, press down firmly to set ingredients*

Enjoy with a Mediterranean salad of chopped tomato, cucumber, red onion or scallion, black olives, and feta or goat cheese. Glass of wine–always nice.

Afterward, poke the fire, add some wood, lay down on sofa with a book or for a shelter-in-place power nap.

Quarantine comfort eating is completed.

Why cast iron cookware is the rule: care-about-cast-iron

We All Need the Eggs

April 6, 2020April 3, 2023 / wendyulfers / 7 Comments

This is a story about friendship. And eggs.

Many of the most rewarding relationships in my life are friendships formed when we lived in Asia, the Mediterranean, and Europe. Our family friendship with the people in this story, Nancy, Maddy, and Cabby, began in Taiwan in the 1990s. We forged relationships in the midst of howling typhoons and bed-shaking earthquakes, during Thanksgiving pig roasts, in delivery rooms birthing babies, on hillside picnics with roaming water buffalo [transcendent-picnics], at uncountable dinner parties in each other’s homes, and on apartment rooftops.

In 2018, we decided to have a reunion in Greece. Shortly before Easter, Nancy flew from New York to Paris where I was living. Together we traveled to Athens where Maddy and Cabby are now living.

In Greece, we shed our Asian history and jumped right into a mix of antiquity and contemporary adventures. As we climbed to the rooftop of their home, the Acropolis and Parthenon appeared stage center before our eyes. Hellooooooo Athina.

Mornings began with breakfast carried to the roof–an image imprinted forever in my mind. Strong French-pressed coffee, a bowl of Greek yogurt with sour cherries spooned on top, a basket of buttered toast, hardboiled eggs. And that view…

*top of the acropolis*, wendy, nancy, maddy

*seaside, temple of Poseidon*, nancy, wendy, maddy

Family and holiday traditions are often a shared experience with friends overseas. During the Taiwan years, when our children were young, Maddy and Cabby hosted an annual family-centered party at Easter time. Eggs, dyed and decorated, were hung from dried branches standing upright in a tall vase to form a colorful egg tree. Multiple families were invited. There was food and a ceremony involving candles and a song. Then the eggs were selected from the tree, one to each person, and taken home in carefully packed containers.

Twenty-five years later, Cabby was in the final phase of decorating 60 eggs hanging over the second floor balcony. I don’t mean simple-dipped-in-one-pastel-color-dyed eggs. I mean Eggs As Art.

In the 1990s, decorating small bare tree branches as “Easter Egg Trees” became popular in the United States. In the Tennis/Hewitt family, the first egg tree was produced in Cambridge, Massachusetts when their first-born, Liza, was a toddler. It consisted of a single branch decorated with a few colored eggs taken to a party of graduate school friends.

Following graduate degrees and the birth of a second child, Maddy and Cabby moved to Taiwan. In succeeding years, their egg tree tradition was shared with international school families from Taipei, to Cairo, to Johannesburg, to Saudi Arabia.

Watching the tradition unfold in Athens, I realized that an important annual event, merged with artistry, had created outreach and a ripple effect in international relationships. Families from different countries and cultures invited to the Egg Tree celebration often carried it forward. They began new traditions that passed on beyond the Tennis/Hewitt family.

Maddy inspires action. Cabby implements details. It’s one of the ways they complement each other. Together they prioritize the importance of nurturing the family they created with lasting traditions.

Cab also has a knack for research and prototyping. Since crafting the first egg tree, he experimented and fine-tuned the “how to” process of taking a raw white egg and turning it into something spectacular. The steps from A to Z are not for the impatient or the faint of heart. But, the results are dazzling.

In the beginning, there was trial and error. He blew out the egg interiors as a first step only to realize that empty eggs don’t sink in bowls of dye. There was year-by-year evolution, advancing the dyeing/waxing techniques used today. For example, randomly splattered candle wax creates only one type of pattern underneath–spots. So Cabby made small tools from toothpicks and wooden skewers that allow painting stripes, swirls, and even plaid patterns onto the shell with hot melted wax. Complexity and depth magically emerge after rounds of dyeing/waxing/dyeing/waxing on a single egg. Each egg reveals a surprise ending.

The bleaching process arose from a mistake of leaving an egg too long in one dye. Because it turned an ugly dark color, he wondered why not lighten it with bleach. A new step was added when he discovered bleaching enhanced the depth and range of dye colors.

Growing up overseas, the three Tennis children spent time around the table with their parents learning the egg dyeing craft. One Christmas, when they were older, each of them received a complete supply kit with containers, dye packets and tools to build their own egg tree and carry on the tradition after leaving home.

Oldest son, Whiting, took on the challenge first as a university student. Now married and teaching in an international school overseas, he produces spectacularly decorated eggs and invites faculty families to participate in the Egg Tree Party.

After leaving Athens, I thought about the generosity of sharing this family-centered tradition all over the world and how comfortably it links people together in international communities. Cabby and Maddy exemplify a natural ability to build and create inclusiveness in every one of their relationships.

The Tennis Family Egg Tree Tradition is one way their family has fostered love and respect in their global and personal family and friends network. It begins at home with a circle of people gathered around a bare branched tree covered with kaleidoscope colored eggs.

I’m reminded of the ending to the movie Annie Hall. The main character muses about the nuances of relationships, suggesting they are sometimes irrational, usually complex, and often absurd. He tries to sum up his feelings with a joke:

…A guy walks into a psychiatrist’s office and says, hey doc, my brother’s crazy! He thinks he’s a chicken. The doc says why don’t you turn him in? The guy says, I would but I need the eggs.

And, he’s right. We strive to hold onto each other in love, support and caring, because, actually, all of us…need the eggs.

This is the definitive “How-To” for dyeing and decorating eggs in the Tennis/Hewitt tradition. Instructions are by Cabby Tennis. There is minor editing on my part for clarity.

THE TENNIS FAMILY EGG TREE

WHY GO TO ALL THIS TROUBLE FOR A FEW COLORED EGGS?

It brings family and friends around the table working creatively together.
There is hands-on learning––coordination, art, safety, chemistry, physics, perseverance, patience and the final “wow” factor with each finished egg.
There is grace and humility in overcoming a “Humpty Dumpty” moment of loss on the kitchen floor.
It can become an annual family tradition.
Eggs are beautiful.

GETTING STARTED

Source dyes in craft shop or order online. Powdered dyes offer greater color variety. Suggested websites: Ukrainiangiftshop.com, BestPysanky.com, Ukrainianeggcessories.com
Cover surface of worktable with taped together garbage bags, a vinyl tablecloth, or shower curtain liner. Layer of newspaper on top absorbs spills. Do not work over carpeting! Outside picnic table is ideal.
Set up table with plastic gloves, liquid dye containers, plastic spoons, eggs, paper towels [pre-torn into a stack of single sheets], empty egg cartons, waxing tools [explained below], 3 bowls for bleach and rinse water, candles for waxing, small saucepan for hot melted wax, scissors, pen, scotch tape.

EGGS – Unstamped white eggs are best. Large [not XL] range free eggs tend to have stronger shells. Rinse under water–no soap. Eggs are dyed raw because they are heavier and will sink. Blowing them out comes later.

CONTAINERS FOR LIQUID DYES – Any glass jar [preferably with lid] such as jam jars, canning jars, etc. One plastic spoon per jar to prevent color mixing as eggs move between dyes. Leftover dye can be kept year to year, so save the jar tops. If not enough jars, use water glasses.

*one spoon per jar, label* *with dye color, keep the lids*

DYE MIXING – 1 packet powdered dye diluted with ¾-1 cup boiling water. Add 1 T. white vinegar. Apple or grape vinegar is ok. (Exception: No vinegar for orange dyes because they will curdle.] Follow package directions for diluting liquid concentrate dyes. Cut off color name from dye packet and tape on jar for reference.

WAXING METHODS

Partially used taper candles set into aluminum tea candle base for dripping or sprinkling wax over eggs.
A small saucepan with hot melted wax to use with tools [see below] or for complete immersion of egg into wax. Leftover candle remnants can be melted over low heat in saucepan on stovetop, camp stove, or hotplate. If no candles at home, purchase 2-3 thrift store pillar candles [any color] as melting base.

*old candles to melt down, saucepan with solidified wax ready to heat*

WAYS OF APPLYING WAX – Time to get creative. Holding a lit candle above egg, drip or shake/splatter wax onto shell. You can also use tools made from several toothpicks or split bamboo skewers bound with rubber bands to paint on wax. Repeatedly dip wooden tool into melted wax in saucepan, then touch or tap the egg with the tool. Egg color underneath the wax will be preserved and not take on next dye color. This is how you create different color patterns by waxing stripes, dots, or splatters on the dry egg. The number of colors on the egg depends how many times it goes through the cycle of 1. Wax 2. Dye 3. Dry.

*candle set up for waxing, wooden tools made from toothpicks and skewers*

DUNK DYEING – Place waxed egg into any dye jar, then remove and gently dry with paper towel before waxing on a new layer of stripes or splatters. Repeat sequence as many times as you wish. Each wax application retains the color underneath it. Dyeing sequence is from light colors to dark. Begin with yellow [or any light color] moving toward darker colors each time you 1. Wax 2. Dye 3. Dry. Creativity and patience are keys to this technique.

BLEACHING as part of the dunk dyeing process – An optional but effective way to reverse the usual light to dark dyeing sequence. Bleach lets you cut through any final dye color [even black] that is un-waxed on the egg. Once the dark color is bleached, a lighter color can be dyed over it. This takes deft handling. Three bowls recommended. One with 1 part bleach to 2 parts water, and two [or 3] rinsing bowls with plain water. Dip the egg into bleach solution. Then move it through the rinse cycles, swirling thoroughly through each bowl. Egg continues to bleach with each step. Dry with paper towel. Note: The bleach will creep under some of the wax edges so be quick with the steps. You can do several rounds of 1. Bleach 2. Rinse 3. Dye 4. Wax 5. Dye and then repeat.

POWDER DYEING – This is a simple and efficient one step method to achieve beautiful eggs with the look of Monet water lilies or a ‘60s tie-dye experience. Eggs must be moist after soaking in plain water or liquid dye. Use leftover powder remnants [from envelopes used to make liquid dye] or open new ones specifically for this technique. With previously opened packets, write the color name on the outside to identify the powder inside.

METHOD FOR POWDER DYEING – Wearing clean, dry gloves lift a wet egg from bowl and hold each end between thumb and fingers. Tap the powder dye envelope against the egg to sprinkle grains onto the moist surface. Upon contact they will explode into fireworks shapes. Turn the egg and keep applying powder until it has the look you want. Use different colors, but be careful of combinations. Red, green and blue used together will turn brown. When desired color is achieved, quickly pat dry and immerse in saucepan of hot melted wax to seal. Or splatter with candle wax.

DE-WAXING EGGS – Wear gloves. Place used candle stubs or pillar candles into small saucepan over low to medium-low heat on stovetop. You need enough wax to completely immerse an egg. Have a stack of prepared paper towels nearby. With a slotted spoon, lower egg into the pan and stir gently, watching for wax coating to loosen and shed. [Stirring speeds up wax removal.] When the coating is clearly melted, add a second egg to the pan and lift first egg out. Rub loosened wax off first egg with paper towel. It should feel smooth with no rough spots and have a shiny patina. When wax in the pan starts to film over, time to re-heat on low temperature.

Safety note: Heat wax only until it liquefies. If it starts to smoke, it’s too hot and should be removed from heat.

Economy note: Place the saucepan of wax in the refrigerator overnight. The solidified wax will pop out the next morning. Store for re-use the next year.

BLOWING OUT THE EGGS – Use a bellows type egg blower. Good source: Best Pysanky Egg Blower. With the awl that comes in the kit, make a hole in the exact bottom of egg the size of a wooden kitchen matchstick. The bellows pumps air in and forces white and yolk out the bottom hole. Be gentle. Take your time. Too much pressure and egg can explode. Use a paper clip or thin wire to break yolk or un-jam clogs as needed. Do this in rounds, about 10 eggs in a round, letting each egg sit upright between rounds so gravity can help the insides move to the bottom. Next, do a “gravity shake”. Holding egg upright in fingers, firmly and repeatedly whack your wrist against the tabletop onto a paper towel. When drips emerge from bottom of egg, blow it out again. Repeat until nothing comes out of egg and it feels light and empty. Finally, carefully use the awl to make a hole the size of a thick paperclip in the top center of egg. This is where knotted string will be attached later.

BAKING THE HOLLOW EGGS – This removes the final film of wax and bakes inside of eggs to prevent spoiling. In a preheated metal pan, place 6 eggs at a time on their sides. Make sure both ends of egg are open and unplugged or egg can explode in the oven. Bake at 350 F for 4 minutes. Watch carefully so they don’t burn. Remove from oven and cover pan with foil or kitchen towel to retain heat. Place next pan of eggs in to bake. Quickly rub each baked egg with paper towel to remove any wax residue before it cools.

*the ever-ready stack of paper towels, a baking disaster*

STRINGING THE EGGS – Use thin string such as dental floss or embroidery thread. Tie a knot and create a loop where the size of the knot barely fits inside top hole of egg. Hold the knot against the hole, and gently push it inside the egg with a paper clip. Expand hole with the awl if necessary. Line up strung eggs for gluing. One by one squirt a tiny dab of super glue into the hole. This affixes knot inside the egg. Let eggs rest on their sides [string parallel to table top] while glue dries. Avoid getting too much glue on the string above the egg as it will dry stiffly and can snap like a twig over time.

*loop, knot, squirt of glue, dry in side lying pose*

HANGING AND FINAL CLEANING OF EGGS – String a rope where eggs can be suspended at least 6 inches apart. Use large paper clips or loops of wire to attach eggs to rope. If inside the house, place drop cloths below to catch drips. Wear gloves and use a soft cloth to gently wipe each egg all over with paint thinner [white spirits in Europe]. Dry with another soft cloth to remove any residual wax. Let stand for 30 minutes. This step speeds up drying time of the lacquer.

LACQUERING THE EGGS – Use clear polyurethane [Varathane] or Spar Varnish to seal eggs and enhance colors with a durable finish coat. Varnish can be satin or gloss finish. [Cabby prefers gloss.] Dip fingers into the urethane and rub each egg, coating from top to bottom. Dab off accumulated drips with paper towel. Lacquer can take 1-3 days to dry. Eggs kept year to year can be re-lacquered annually. The Tennis family has one egg, “Jungle Book”, with over 15 coats and a deep hard shine.

NAMING [Optional, but great fun] – Give each egg a creative name–something it reminds you of. Examples from the 2020 collection: The Duke of Earl, Violet Sultana, Jigsaw Cyan, Fly Like an Eagle, Calypso, Sgt. Pepper, Tetherball, Clouds of Mercury, Purple Reign, Gilly Spring

BEST EGG TREES – Made with dry sticks or branches with many limbs. Bougainvillea branches are excellent. Bind branches with string or zip ties and place in a large vase or container, preferably metal. Fill with rocks/pebbles to keep branches secured and centered. Hang eggs in a pleasing arrangement.

THE EGG GIFTING TRADITION – Invite families with young children to your home. Have an Easter reading about the historic symbolism of eggs, the season of spring and renewal, or related meaningful traditions. Light hand held candles one by one around the circle, and sing, “This Little Light of Mine”. Pass a bowl of folded bits of paper with numbers on them. Eggs are chosen from the tree in numerical order. [Parents sometimes trade numbers so children can pick earlier.] Number 1 leaves the room after pre-selecting an egg in their mind. The group tries to guess which egg will be chosen. #1 returns, removes their egg and the sequence continues. The key is to keep the pace going without dampening the enthusiasm of conjecture.

Egg cartons are filled with selected eggs for each family to take home.

A new egg tree tradition begins.

Cabby has additional details such as video clips of different stages of the process and a movie of the complete 2020 egg line up with names included. For more information, contact: windowtoalifeoverseas@gmail.com

Ode to My Paris Kitchen

March 13, 2020July 19, 2026 / wendyulfers / 18 Comments

I’m watching snow fall outside the dining room windows in our mountain cabin in Colorado. It’s good to have a retreat for winter hibernation or to avoid cities during a pandemic.

With the world facing a global health challenge and each of us needing to do what we can, collectively and individually, my thoughts turn to kitchens. Kitchens are the heartbeat of a home. During uncertain times we need them more than ever as a calming, comfortable retreat to nourish body and spirit.

A kitchen is a good place to be, almost always the best place in the house. –Michael Ruhlman

The world begins at the kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live. The gifts of the earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on. –Joy Harjo

Designed as the room to prepare food and feed a household, kitchens are also the place for informal banter, story telling, blasting favorite music while cooking or cleaning up, problem solving around the table, and memory-evoking aromas from childhood onward.

From early marriage through 31 years of overseas living, I have unpacked and set up sixteen kitchens. Eleven were in rented houses or apartments. Five were in homes we purchased. One is of my own design. It stands as a close second to the best kitchen I ever inhabited.

Good kitchens are not about size. –Nigel Slater

My favorite kitchen has an old, yellow and orange, hexagonal-tiled floor. There is strong natural light, wooden countertops, and a window that opens in, like a door. It overlooks an interior courtyard of leafy Virginia creeper, twining thickly up brick walls. There is a small eating area next to it with a brown and gray marble fireplace and a tall French window with wavy antique glass. Outside, tendrils of vines hang down and create a living curtain that moves in the breeze. It was built into a Haussmannian apartment building in Paris, France.

To reach the kitchen, you crisscross the entire apartment–from the front door, through the wide entrance corridor, zig zagging down two narrow interior hallways to the backend of the building. This is the original floor plan for family-sized apartments, built in 1905, in the sixteenth Arrondissement in Paris.

During the early 20th century, Parisian kitchens were largely domains of household help who slept in tiny bedrooms under the roof. They shared a Turkish toilet and cold running water from a miniature corner sink in the hallway. There is a spiral wooden staircase to these rooms behind a double locked metal door in the kitchen.

By the time we moved to Paris, my daily cooking years were over. Children had grown up and now lived on another continent. Still, I was drawn to this kitchen every time I came home. Windows that opened wide over the quiet green of the courtyard became my meditative retreat.

I have a fireplace in my kitchen that I light every night, no matter what. –Alice Waters

During the dark wintery months, candles and oil lamps were lit on the fireplace mantel every morning and evening in the kitchen dining area.

My writing mentor, M.F.K. Fisher [1908-1992] said that a good kitchen requires few things.

There are only three things I need to make my kitchen a pleasant one. First, I need space to get a good simple meal for six people…Then, I need a window or two, for clear air and the sight of things growing…more of either would be wasteful. –M.F.K. Fisher

During our last six years overseas, I found Fisher’s vision in my perfect kitchen too. It had sufficient counter space for setting out an array of ingredients or rolling out pizza dough. The chopping board under the window opened to flowers in window boxes and vines that unfurled in tender green shoots each spring and dropped to the ground in red, yellow and orange splendor by November.

This kitchen was the site of preparing simple meals for two, dinner parties for ten, girlfriend TGIFs, or standup cocktails and hors d’oeuvres for a crowd. Sunday pizza night was a weekly ritual. [wait-twenty-minutes-then-add-salt] It was the gathering place for breakfast and Christmas holiday meal preparation with family visiting from America. The chopping block was the stage for photo shoots to illustrate my story writing.

adam, anna, and leila in paris for the holidays, 2017

You start out playing in kitchens, and you end up playing in kitchens. –Trisha Yearwood

Our first grandchild played with wooden utensils and plastic storage containers on the tile floor while her mother and I played at roasting a chicken or making Latvian Lasagna. [love-and-layers-of-lasagne] She patted her own tiny pizza dough with her grandfather at the marble topped table in front of the fireplace.

The kitchen is where we come to understand our past and ourselves.–Laura Esquival

Many people think spending an hour or two in the kitchen is a waste of time. But it is a good investment in your spiritual development. –Laura Esquival

People who find their kitchen a good place to spend time would agree there is another dimension beyond mere preparation and cleanup. Whether you cook regularly or not, “inhabiting” a space that is pleasant and inviting is paramount to defining the kitchen as the soul of the house. More importantly, this is where you can retreat into your thoughts and dreams and nourish health in a personal way.

True health care reform cannot happen in Washington. It has to happen in our kitchens, in our homes, in our communities. All health care is personal. –Mehmet Oz

These days, as we are staking out a safe place in the world by spending more time at home, don’t forsake the importance of your kitchen. Use it as a haven for renewing spirits, replenishing bodies, and exchanging worry for hope and optimism.

Hopefully, there is a window nearby to provide “clear air and the site of things growing”. And candles to light when the sun goes down.

I believe that one of the most dignified ways we are capable of, to assert and then reassert our dignity in the face of poverty and war’s fears and pains, is to nourish ourselves with all possible skill, delicacy and enjoyment. –M.F.K. Fisher, How to Cook a Wolf

Weeknight Bolognese from the Barefoot Contessa–Good comfort food

Ingredients:

Good Olive Oil
1# lean ground sirloin [or 1# mushrooms for vegetarian, or both!]
4-5 minced garlic cloves
1 T. dried oregano
1/4-1/2 t. red pepper flakes
1 1/4 C. dry red wine
28 oz. can crushed tomatoes
2 T. tomato paste
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1# dry pasta, any kind
1/4 t. nutmeg [optional]
1/4 C. chopped fresh basil, packed tightly
1/4/ C. heavy cream [or use milk]
Fresh parmesan

Assembly:

Heat 2 T. olive oil in large skillet on med-hi. Add ground meat and cook until it starts to brown. Stir in garlic, oregano, and red pepper. Cook another minute, then pour in 1 C. red wine. Add canned tomatoes, tomato paste, 1 T. salt and 1 1/2 t. pepper, stirring to combine.

Bring sauce to a boil, lower heat and simmer 10 min. In another pot, cook pasta in salted water until al dente.

Add nutmeg [if you have], chopped basil and milk or cream to the simmering sauce and continue another 8-10 min. Add remaining 1/4 C. red wine or some pasta cooking water [as needed] to make enough sauce.

Serve sauce over pasta with lots of freshly grated Parmesan on the side.

My Brief Stint With the CIA

January 8, 2020April 6, 2023 / wendyulfers / 13 Comments

A Hollywood movie was released in 1998 called Sliding Doors. It’s a romantic comedy in which the plot alternates between story lines depending on whether the female character jumps through a closing subway door and catches the train or misses it entirely.

The concept of “sliding doors” is life’s trajectory. Even mundane moments of decision-making can alter future outcomes. We all think about what might have been if we had chosen differently in our lives.

I wonder if we sometimes pass through sliding doors completely unaware. When what we are doing is different than what we think it is. When someone else chooses for us.

It helps to have an active imagination.

For example, I could have been recruited as a CIA operative earlier in life, making a conscious choice to jump through that door. But it didn’t happen that way. Instead, the CIA found me.

In the early 1990’s, I was married and raising two young children with a husband working in Nicosia, Cyprus. We had a friend I will call “John”. His job was with the “State Department” in the U.S. Embassy. We assumed he was part of the CIA desk because he made extensive trips throughout the Middle East, Europe and North Africa. Also, he never talked about his work.

John was a foodie before the term was common in popular culture. He relished good food and wine, and was knowledgeable about both. When he wasn’t out of town gathering information and following leads, he enjoyed long lunches at his favorite Italian restaurant, La Romantica. The owners knew him well. They were cued to his wine preferences and shared what was fresh on the menu. He always reserved the same corner table.

As John often entertained visitors, he began inviting me to join his lunch gatherings. I had no idea who any of the guests were, met them only once, never saw them again. It was always new people from different countries and cultures. At first, I thought I was rounding out the table for some good food and conversation with a friend and his clients.

I can talk to just about anyone in a social setting, even people I don’t know, by asking a question that leads to a further question. “Tell me about…” followed up with “And what about…?” A slight nod and unwavering eye contact helps people go on and on with their stories.

As a conversational skill, the focus is on the talker. Begin with one searching question, followed by the next, and then another. Sometimes people share more than intended. Perhaps John knew I naturally asked a lot of questions. What I noticed about him was that he hardly said anything at all. He just listened.

Oh, he ordered bottles of wine for the table, joked with the chef and his wife and made recommendations about food. Otherwise, he quietly took in what people were saying, what they were telling me.

After several lunches, I began to wonder if I was gathering info for his professional files instead of being a good guest chatting up sophisticated visitors. The thought escalated after my husband asked, “Do you ever wonder why John invites you to lunch with people you don’t know?”

Eventually the lunch crowd thinned and the restaurant emptied, but our table remained intact. There was no mention of needing to vacate the space. This should have been my cue to excuse myself so John and his guests could get down to “real business.” If non-verbal cues were signaled, I missed them.

Instead, I busied myself a different way. Over the course of four, and sometimes five-hour lunches, I became familiar with Romantica’s owners who invited me into the kitchen for a mini-cooking lesson. With hindsight, Signor and Signora “Romantica” were probably in on the gig, too. Allowing John some professional space in the front of the house while they tried to beef up my cooking skills in the back of the house.

I have often said that I am not a natural born cook. Eating well is important, but I love when someone else is in charge of the preparation of a good meal. Still, I learned two memorable recipes from my post-lunch lessons.

The first was how to make a fresh tomato sauce from the beautiful, deep red, Cypriot tomatoes. It begins with removing the skins by dropping them into boiling water. After de-skinning, it is basically a stir-fry for about 20 minutes with olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper, fresh basil leaves added at the end. The eye-closing-wonderful-taste of this simple sauce, with any pasta, has everything to do with tomatoes grown in ancient soil, ripened in blazing hot Mediterranean sun. I found it difficult to replicate elsewhere.

The second thing I learned was how to prepare my favorite order at Romantica; spaghetti aglio, olio e peperoncino. This became one of my comfort foods–spaghetti with garlic, oil, and red pepper flakes. It’s a fast prep made as easily for dining solo as for a crowd.

If the afternoon wore on toward 4:00 or 5:00PM, my husband and John’s wife would show up, their working day ended. They wondered why lunch had stretched into the apéro hour, but sat down as John ordered a final round of wine before we all headed home.

What they didn’t realize was that I had completed another assignment of covert information gathering as a CIA volunteer.

Well, anyway, all imagining aside, what those lunches provided was a set of skills that served me for the rest of our years overseas. With insightful questions, I learned to navigate, and [mostly] enjoy, large social gatherings where I didn’t know anyone.

I’m not wild about stand-up cocktail parties, shoulder-to-shoulder receptions, huge galas, or fancy dancing balls. But we participated in all of these during 31 years overseas. Many times. Gearing up for such events was less formidable when I realized I didn’t have to talk to every person or “work the whole room” as my husband did naturally and very well.

My tactic was to zero in on one or two people for meaningful conversation. Time flew by in a satisfying way and felt better spent without idle mingling and wishing to kick off high-heeled shoes. Thus, my brief interrogation stint with the CIA had a positive afterlife.

Life’s opportunities come and go. Whether we decide to enter a door as it opens, or miss it and choose the next–there is always an experience or an unexpected something that follows.

Overseas living was a sliding door of opportunity for us. The courage to jump [blindly] was necessary only once. With the next international job and the next, we understood that our family unit would remain tight and our collection of memorable stories would continue to grow.

However, I still wonder about one sliding door, many years ago, which briefly opened for me personally. Riding horses in my 20’s, and newly married, I was offered a job as an exercise rider for thoroughbreds. It required travel and hinted of excitement, risk, adventure.

Now there’s another story ending to imagine…

SPAGHETTI AGLIO, OLIO E PEPERONCINO

Ingredients:

1 lb. spaghetti
1/3 C. good olive oil
8 garlic cloves, minced
½-1 tsp. red pepper flakes
½-1 C. flat-leaf parsley or baby spinach, coarsely chopped
1 C. freshly grated Parmesan cheese

parsley ready to cut in tall glass with scissors

Preparation:

Cook spaghetti in boiling salted water until al dente. Reserve ½ C. pasta water.
Heat olive oil in large saucepan.
Sauté red pepper flakes with garlic until garlic just begins to brown.
Stir in the reserved pasta water.
Add the cooked spaghetti and heat through, mixing all together.
Sprinkle with parsley and Parmesan.
Serve immediately.
Use additional parsley and Parmesan as garnish.
If you don’t like spice, leave out the pepper flakes and you have spaghetti aglio e olio.

comfort food garnished with extra cheese and parsley

or a whole meal with spinach salad, wine, and candles

Addendum:

Some Italian lineages say never use Parmesan on any pasta dish with an oil base. Parmesan is for tomato sauces. Signora Romantica was of that tradition. But we love Parmesan and made it our own addition.

Other stories of friends and adventures in Cyprus [with recipes, too]:

Fabio Meets Brownies Cocaine

Hellenic Halloumi

Finally, The Best Salad Dressing Ever

November 7, 2019August 19, 2024 / wendyulfers / 13 Comments

Recently, I learned something new about dressing a salad from an article about an Italian restaurant in New York City. With a surprise ingredient [warm water] and a special twist in the assembly, there is now a best-ever-homemade-salad-dressing to have on hand at home. This one tops them all. So dump those bottles of preservative laden grocery store sludge.

Full disclosure: I have poached and improved a recipe from Via Carota resto in Manhattan’s West Village. The New York Times article stated that people who ordered the “Insalata Verde” swore the dressing was delicious enough to eat on its own by the spoonful. I had to see what the fuss was about.

Via Carota is a charming Italian restaurant featuring exposed brick, cozy wood, and ambient decor. There are no reservations. It is almost always packed. Plan on waiting for a table or try to slip onto a stool at the bar.

I invited my Manhattan based sister-in-law to join me for lunch. We decided to split the “Insalata Verde” as it is a veritable mountain of fresh greens, enough for two, or more, people. We were deep in conversation when the salad arrived.

Digging in, we continued talking until I finally blurted out, “Let’s debrief this dressing. All I taste is oil and salt. Where are the other flavors? I wouldn’t eat this with a spoon, even metaphorically.”

Too much oil and salt for my taste, but an inspiring blend of other ingredients became an even better salad dressing in my own kitchen.

The ingredients are common and usually in most home pantries. Except, perhaps, for aged sherry vinegar and shallots.

There are a couple of quirks to the assembly. The first is to rinse minced shallots in cold water. Second is to add one tablespoon of warm water to the vinegar and shallot mix and let sit briefly. And third, the greens should be slightly damp before dressing them. For this, a salad spinner is handy.

Use any amount of the freshest greens you can find. A combination of butter lettuce, endive, romaine, red leaf lettuce, watercress, spinach, arugula, and/or the jumbo mixed box of salad found in every supermarket.

The recipe makes enough for more than one use, unless you are preparing salad for a crowd. It tastes even better the next time it is used. And the time after that.

The tweaks I made to the original recipe are minimal. Cut the oil, double the garlic, adjust the salt. Modify to your own tastes. Be creative–spoon it over vegetables, or meat, or inside a sandwich as the bread spread.

The dressing is loaded with substance in the form of solid bits of shallots and mustard seeds. The small addition of warm water softens the vinegar edge and smoothes the blended flavors sublimely.

Lastly, here are three reasons you never need store bought dressing.

Ten minutes of delicious homemade dressing preparation is a good use of time.
Dinner guests and family will rave about a simple green salad. Every single serving.
With a jar already in the refrig, meal planning is simplified.

Make the Best Green Salad Dressing Ever just once. Then you will understand the urge to dip in and eat it off a spoon.

BEST GREEN SALAD DRESSING EVER

Ingredients:

1 large shallot, minced
2 T. plus 1tsp. aged sherry vinegar
1 T. warm water
½ C. extra-virgin olive oil
1 ½ tsp. Dijon mustard
1 ½ tsp. whole-grain mustard [with seeds]
1 ½ tsp. honey [optional, but I always use it]
2 sprigs thyme, washed and stripped [or use dried thyme leaves]
2 cloves garlic, finely grated
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

E-V olive oil, aged sherry vinegar, honey, Dijon mustard, whole grain mustard, S & P, garlic, shallot

Preparation:

Wash the greens in cold water and discard any stems or brown pieces. Spin in salad spinner, wrap in clean dishtowels, and set aside.
Rinse finely minced shallot in mesh strainer under cold water. Drain. Place in a bowl.
Add sherry vinegar and the tablespoon of warm water. Let sit for two minutes.
Whisk in oil, mustards, honey, thyme, grated garlic, and a pinch of salt.
Taste and adjust salt and vinegar as needed. Using these measurements, I have not found it necessary to adjust anything.

Serving:

Place prepared greens in a large serving bowl and drizzle dressing over, tossing to lightly coat. I don’t like a heavy coating of dressing, so drizzle to your taste. Generously grind black pepper over the top. Toss again. Taste and serve.

Refrigerate remaining dressing in a glass jar. If the refrigerator temperature is very cold and the olive oil has slightly solidified when you want to reuse, let sit at room temperature to warm and liquify.

For the abridged version when short on time and ingredients, simply whisk together:

1 diced shallot, 2 T. vinegar of choice, 2 T. Dijon mustard, 6 T. extra virgin olive oil, S &P. Store in refrigerator until ready to use.

A Guest Room Under the Porch

August 31, 2019March 28, 2024 / wendyulfers / 31 Comments

Summer in the Colorado Rocky Mountains began in June this year.

A guest I wasn’t expecting had already arrived. Stepping onto the covered front porch, a young deer with budding antlers leapt out from underneath my feet. He had moved in below the decking, among rocks laid down years ago.

The buck didn’t venture far, sticking close to nearby pine trees, pretending to graze and glance silently at me. Over the course of days, I became familiar with his routine and he with mine.

I began calling softly, “Hey Buddy, it’s just me”, when he startled awake with my footsteps above him. If it was late afternoon, nocturnal foraging began and he wandered away.

My husband arrived one week later. We have our morning coffee here, on the porch that faces north, with a view of craggy rock knobs and old Ponderosas. Rays of rising sunlight are welcome when the air is cool.

We began to see Buddy meandering “home”, well after sunrise, having pulled the typical all-nighter for a mule deer. Sometimes there were two younger bucks with him. When he angled down the hill toward his sleeping space the others strolled on down the road.

Because we were often sitting on top of his semi-concealed den, he began lying down in the grass area off the porch, awake and relaxed. He saw us. We saw him. He heard our voices as we talked. An unusual compatibility formed. When we left our chairs he would ease back into his rocky enclosure and bed down. One day led to the next…

Mule deer are indigenous to Colorado and Rocky Mountain National Park. They differ from their whitetail cousins with a larger body build, oversized ears, a black tipped white tail, and white patch on the rump. Males prefer sleeping among rocky ridges while females like bedding down in meadows protected by trees and shrubbery. Life span can approach ten years, but only if they avoid mountain lions, bobcats, and packs of coyotes.

Antlers are shed and re-grown every year. In the beginning, they are covered in hairy skin called velvet. Velvet supplies blood to protect and nourish them while they are still soft and fragile. As they grow, [as much as half an inch a day] a deer’s antlers branch forward and “fork”, then fork again. When full size is reached, the velvet dies off and bucks remove it by rubbing on trees and bushes. This also strengthens their neck for sparring with other males in the fall rut.

Days turned into weeks as we watched Buddy’s frame fill out. His antlers seemed to grow visibly overnight, forking once, then twice into an impressive display. He was going to be a player in this season’s rut.

In late July, we left Estes Park heading northwest on a road trip to visit two families of overseas friends. In contrast to dry, grassy, wildflower meadows and granite-rock mountains, our friends summer near water–a large lake in the Idaho panhandle, and the Methow River valley in northern Washington State.

Sometimes we wondered about our under-the-porch guest back in Colorado. Husband surreptitiously placed a web cam to observe activity while we were away. Feedback went to his phone, but only for a short time. Within days, Buddy stuck his face into the camera lens and apparently kicked the whole thing over. We could only guess whether he abandoned the den…or simply triumphed over unwanted technology.

Spending time with friendships that began in Taiwan in the 1990s was the highlight of our days on the road. In northern Idaho, on our friends’ boat, we enjoyed a scenic tour of Lake Pend Oreille followed by a sunset dinner al fresco. The next day, in a two-car caravan, we drove to Mazama, Washington where the Methow River runs through the property of our friends.

Important activities take place along this strip of rocky, sandy riverbed as the Methow flows by. Cooking over fire in a circular rock surround, lumberjacking dead trees for winter firewood, sleeping in teepee or tent, sharing meals, talking and story telling, watching clouds, the sunrise or the sunset, reading with the soothing background noise of water sounds. Rhythms of a summer lived outside play daily here. It is the spiritual landscape of our friends. While sharing their space we moved within its cadence and felt it, too.

to teepee island with the Methow running through

symbolic exchange of antique tins with back and forth visits

A circuitous route took us back to Colorado after saying good-bye in Mazama. When we pulled off the dirt road onto the cabin driveway, it was still light enough to note the sleeping den was empty. The web cam was upside down near rocks about fifteen feet from the porch steps. Buddy returned the next morning, noting our presence by plopping down and waiting for us to finish breakfast and move off the porch.

Our cabin was built to house a crowd. Family and friends pile upstairs and bunk in rooms with multiple beds. Less than a week after we returned home there were rounds of guests–more footsteps, new smells, even a baby’s babbling voice. Buddy moved out.

It’s been several weeks now since he left. A woman mentioned that her husband saw a deer sleeping in an unused barn on the property they are renting. It is just below us. Visiting sister-in-law saw a buck with good-sized antlers walking with a doe early one morning. We ran into Buddy, grazing one evening, as we walked home from a neighbor’s cabin. He started to walk toward us, then turned and kept his distance. There is a return to natural order on the hillside.

These days the morning air smells of approaching autumn. The temperature at sunrise can be nippy in that put-on-your-sweatshirt-to-sit-outside kind of way. Sunlight has shifted its arc. The bugling chorus of bull elk, signaling the start of the rut, is only days away. Change of season in the mountains propels the notion of moving on.

Yet, for a short while this summer we shared an uncommon acquaintance with a young deer as he grew into strength and maturity. We liked his quiet presence. He tolerated ours. We didn’t invite him, so I guess he chose us…because he found a guest room that suited him under the porch.

CLICK HERE to view a short video of Buddy coming home

Our spiritual geography in Colorado told here: Bugling Elk and Sacred Spaces

Will Our Children Know and Care About June 6, 1944?

June 2, 2019June 25, 2022 / wendyulfers / 10 Comments

Editor’s Note: While we were living in France, my husband was invited by the American Embassy in 2014 to take a group of students from the American School in Paris to a commemorative ceremony overlooking Omaha Beach at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial. It was the 70^thanniversary of the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944. The presidents of France and the United States spoke. American veterans of that fateful day were present. It was a time to reflect on remarkable courage and leadership–with freedom as the outcome. I wrote about that here: The Unexpected in Normandy

Five years later, as the 75^th D-Day anniversary approaches, we now live in the U.S. and find ourselves thinking about our country’s role in today’s world. I asked my husband to be a guest writer and offer his perspective on keeping the spirit of D-Day alive. What follows are his remembrance and thoughts about an historic event and the hope that the metaphoric message of D-Day will live on throughout all generations. Thank you, Mark.

“an orchard of graves”, Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, Omaha Beach

There’s a graveyard in northern France where all the dead boys from D-Day are buried. The white crosses reach from one horizon to the other. I remember looking it over and thinking it was a forest of graves. But the rows were like this, dizzying, diagonal, perfectly straight, so after all it wasn’t a forest but an orchard of graves. –Barbara Kingsolver

Second Lieutenant Richard Winters parachuted into D-Day in the early hours of June 6, 1944, separated from his weapon as he jumped, landing miles away from the rest of his Easy Company 506 Parachute Regiment. A soldier from another company, who came down near Winters, asked if they were lost. Lieutenant Winter’s response? “We’re not lost private, we’re in Normandy.” Operation Overlord had begun at 1:30AM on a pitch-dark morning.

In all, about 75,000 Americans parachuted behind the lines or disembarked from an armada of boats onto Utah and Omaha beaches that first day. Casualties were over 10,000. With unimaginable sacrifice and courage, so began the liberation of France and, once the breakout unfolded beyond Normandy, the fall of German Fascism.

Consider that seventy-five years ago the youth of America with their lives out in front of them came ashore, under withering fire, based on a premise of arriving into a country not their own, fighting to liberate a people they did not know, and becoming one with the human race in a fight against Nazism. Not words but actions to preserve democratic ideals of self-government, liberty, equality and human freedoms. “America First”–no. American leadership–yes. In the words of Harry S. Truman, “America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.”

But on June 6, 1944 there was terror amid bloodshed and dying young men crying out for their mothers. It was a time when America did the most important thing on earth by letting besieged nations know they were not alone. It was American power with characteristic capacity for good.

Today if you fly into Paris, rent a car, and drive into the Normandy countryside you will see two flags adorning doorways of farmhouses and homes–the French tri-color and the American stars and stripes. Young school children still tend the graves in allied cemeteries across France.

Five years ago, I took students to Colleville-sur-Mer, in Normandy, France, to participate in the ceremony of the 70^thanniversary of the D-Day landings. That year’s commemoration brought together then U.S. President Barack Obama and French President François Hollande at the Normandy American Cemetery. They spoke of what love means after all: sacrifice and selflessness. Standing on this ground, absorbing the meaning of their speeches, made me weep. I wanted every child from now to eternity to understand what happened in Normandy.

entrance to American Cemetery and Memorial, Omaha Beach, Normandy

President Obama observed that, “If prayer were made of sound, the skies over England that night would have deafened the world. And in the pre-dawn hours, planes rumbled down runways; gliders and paratroopers slipped through the sky; giant screws began to turn on an armada that looked like more ships than sea. And more than 150,000 souls set off towards this tiny sliver of sand upon which hung more than the fate of a war, but rather the course of human history.”

Then our president said, “But in the annals of history, the world had never seen anything like it. And when the war was won, we claimed no spoils of victory — we helped Europe rebuild. We claimed no land other than the earth where we buried those who gave their lives under our flag and where we station those who still serve under it. But America’s claim — our commitment — to liberty, our claim to equality, our claim to freedom and to the inherent dignity of every human being — that claim is written in the blood on these beaches, and it will endure for eternity.”

How important it was for our students, surrounded by 9388 gravestones, to hear about America’s (and our allies) sacrifice beyond borders.

9388 gravestone markers stretching toward the sea

President Hollande described the reality of that day in 1944, “Seventy years ago to the day, right here, opposite this beach, this beautiful beach on the Riva Bella, thousands of young soldiers jumped into the water under a torrent of gunfire and ran toward the German defenses. They were 20 years old, give or take a few years, and at that moment, who could say that 20 was the best age in life? For them, 20 was the age of duty, it was the age of commitment, it was the age of sacrifice. They were cold; they were afraid. On that June 6th the air, so pure today, was thick with the smoke of the first clashes, and riven by the din of explosions. The calm water we see today was striped with foam from the landing craft and red with the blood of the first combatants. What were those 20-year-olds thinking in the face of this terror? They must have been thinking of their beloved mothers, their fathers so worried, their loved ones so far away, their childhoods so recent, and their lives so short, lives whose horizons were blotted out by the war.”

“And yet those young men, amid that hell of fire and steel, didn’t hesitate for one second. They advanced, advanced across the soil of France, braving the bullets and shells; they advanced, risking their lives to defeat a diabolical enemy; they advanced to defend a noble cause; they advanced, yes, and went on advancing, to free us, to liberate us at last.”

The French president reminded us about the character of America and our country’s leadership, “But the soldiers who came from the sea had achieved the essential thing. The essential thing was to set foot on French soil, and on 6 June they had begun to liberate France. And as the sun set on the Longest Day, a radiant beam of hope rose over subservient Europe. On these Normandy beaches, the memory lingers of a bitter, uncertain, decisive confrontation. On these peaceful Normandy beaches, the souls of the fighters who gave their lives to save Europe live on. On these tranquil beaches, whatever the weather, whatever the climate of the seasons, a single wind blows, the wind of freedom. It still blows today.”

Presidents Barack Obama and François Hollande, June 6, 2014, Omaha Beach

On that beautiful spring day in the “orchard of gravestones”, Normandy American Cemetery, all of us attending the 70^thanniversary recognized that freedom is fragile and that we must stand together as nations. Hollande continued, “I’ve talked about courage – the courage of the soldiers, the courage of the resistance fighters, the courage of people at the time; courage in wartime. But courage in peacetime is just as essential and necessary. What motivated the soldiers who landed here 70 years ago? Their patriotic duty? Yes, no doubt. But also an idea, an idea they all shared, whatever their nationality: by setting foot here, on these beaches, they were carrying a dream, a dream which seemed impossible in 1944; a dream born out of the depths of despair, a dream which enlightened their conscience. What was this dream? It was the promise of a world free from tyranny and war.”

Speaking directly to President Obama, François Hollande said, “Mr. President, the French people recognize an indefatigable energy in America, an ability to innovate, create, invent and carry the dream of success. But what they admire the most in the American people – because they themselves are its most ardent champions – is their love of freedom. And my compatriots know that, when the critical moment comes, when our principles are in danger, France and the United States always come together, as in that terrible summer of 1944 on the beaches of Normandy and on the beaches of Provence.”

playing the national anthems of France and the U.S.A.

How is it possible to hear the French president’s words about the spirit and character of America and not feel proud, and today wonder how we would ever compromise this legacy under the moniker of “America First?” What is the message we send our youth about the principles of democracy and friendship between nations being worth courage and sacrifice? The story of June 6, 1944 must live in the hearts of today’s and future generations too.

As the 75^thanniversary of the Normandy landings approaches, with many fewer World War II veterans alive, is there not still a message about America’s leadership overseas? To honor those young, forever young soldiers who died for our freedom on foreign soil that day in 1944, what decisions will we make about our world? Is it going to be totalitarianism or will democracies prevail? Will the current “America First” idea, or runaway nationalism, diminish the message of Normandy? History tells a different story. America was not so constructed. We lead with generosity.

Today, American leadership around the world is perhaps in doubt, especially when leaders of other countries are asked. We appear to be an uncertain friend. Our moral compass is without a true north.

Maybe the Longest Day, seventy-five years later can serve as a reminder that if there is an “America First” concept, it is our willingness to step into the breach–to advance values born out of the Constitution and with our allies in common purpose to preserve freedom around the world.

It was William Blake who said, “The most sublime act is to set another before you.” We remember June 6, 1944 by defining a hero as someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself. Such thinking might well apply to individuals and nations alike. A life message to all children–we want them to know and to care.

Let “America First” mean finding our way with confidence and courage to confirm our nation’s place as an agent for good in the world. On this principle, we need to stand rock solid. Think of two soldiers finding their way on the darkest of nights, having been dropped from the sky, not knowing what was ahead, but optimistic–where the metaphor of our time lies in the hopeful words of Dick Winters, “We’re not lost private, we’re in Normandy.”

Wait Twenty Minutes Then Add Salt

May 19, 2019August 25, 2024 / wendyulfers / 21 Comments

Naples, Italy is the birthplace of pizza. When tomato was added to flat bread in the late 18^th century, pizza, as we know it today, was born. If you go to Naples, you will certainly enjoy eating pizza on a cobblestoned street after touring the Amalfi coast and the dusty excavations in Pompeii. Then fly out the next day. Naples is not an easy city.

Pizza ranks high as a favorite food all over the world. You can order in, carry out, or enjoy at your neighborhood spot. However, I don’t eat restaurant pizza anymore, except in Italy, because my husband learned to make perfect pizza dough at home. His finesse began with a friendship of mine.

My husband enjoys creative time in the kitchen. Not everyday. But when people come to our home he will go to finicky recipe extremes. I call it performance cooking. Guests love it. Each course is beautifully plated and presented with a detailed description of what goes into whatever is being served.

His foray into kitchen time began when we lived in Taiwan. Home dinner parties were an almost every weekend event. This, in contrast to meeting up with friends in fluorescent lit, Formica tabled, disposable chopstick, plastic plate restaurants circa 1990s.

We did that often, as well, because the food in Taiwan is fresh and delicious. However, it wasn’t a place for long, conversation filled evenings with good wine and food, heavy china, linen napkins, and candles flickering down the middle of the table.

One of our family rituals while the children were growing up was to have a formal Sunday night dinner. Husband was in charge of menu planning, shopping and meal prep. I laid the table with the “fancier” china and flatware. Son and daughter were on cleanup and some form of “presentation” as entertainment. Those responsibilities worked some of the time.

My friend, Linda, is a Midwestern ex-pat who moved to Taipei with her family several years after our arrival. We became fast friends with husbands and children joining in. Linda’s Sunday night family ritual was making homemade pizza. Her youngest daughter liked to participate by carefully rolling out the dough, just so. Her two teenagers showed up for the eating part.

When she made pizza for guests, I discovered my favorite Linda-topping-recipe. It was always this: the thinnest crust, basil pesto sauce, toasted pine nuts, sliced garlic and fresh chili peppers with grated Parmesan cheese over the top.

Along the way, a quirky tweak was added to her recipe because of an Italian chef named Max, who found himself temporarily employed in a Taipei restaurant. He left Barbados for one year while the hotel where he worked was being renovated. What he loved about the Caribbean was the warm, turquoise colored water and beautiful beaches. Max found Taiwan on a map and saw it was an island, too. He thought he could happily cook and still be near sand and water. That didn’t exactly work out. Not much white sand and blue water in Taipei.

Max enjoyed chatting up lingering late night restaurant customers after the kitchen closed. When Linda mentioned she often made pizza from scratch at home, he told her the secret for the “best pizza dough”. It was a tip from his Italian mama.

Don’t add salt right away. Wait at least 20 minutes to let the yeast, sugar and warm water begin their bubbly reaction. Yeast reacts better without salt added until later. It creates more pliable and elastic dough. From a mother in an Italian village, to a beach loving chef in Taiwan, to an American home cook, here was insider pizza chemistry.

Before Linda left Taiwan, I wrote down her dough recipe with Max’s tweak. I’m the basic kind of cook rather than the finicky kind, so it was filed away and several years went by. Children left home. A new job with new geography moved us out of Asia.

With only two at the table, formal Sunday dinners faded away. We ate out more often because it was Europe! Germany! Restaurant atmosphere was charming. And the food didn’t disappoint.

Sundays in Germany are quiet. Everything closes from Saturday afternoon until Monday morning. Pulling out Linda’s recipe, I waved it in front of my husband and suggested, “We need a new Sunday eating ritual. I love Linda’s pizza. Why don’t you learn to make it?”

And so, my man began kneading and punching and creating homemade dough with puffs of flour in the air and a rolling pin in hand. Sunday night became Pizza Night. It worked when there was just the two of us. It worked as a night for entertaining guests. It worked as a Christmas Eve meal for a crowd.

From rustic Naples centuries ago, to an ex-pat friendship in Taiwan, to a displaced Italian chef and his mother, to a man who found contentment in mixing flour, water, yeast and salt into elastic dough, a new family tradition was formed. Linda’s pizza became ours.

We have made it for family, and for people from cultures around the world. In whatever geography we find ourselves, and in the midst of complexity and the rush of life, we always wait twenty minutes. And then add salt.

MARK’S PIZZA CRUST

Yield: 4, 15-inch or 6, 12-inch pizzas

the basics–flour, water, yeast, sugar [not pictured], and salt

Ingredients:

2 packages active dry yeast
1 t. sugar
2 C. semolina flour–mix in first [optional, but a good Italian touch]
3 C. all purpose flour, plus more for kneading
2 t. salt
Olive oil for coating bowl as dough rises and for pizza pans

Preparation:

Place 2 C. warm water [110-115 degrees F.] in small mixing bowl.
Stir in 1 t. sugar. Then sprinkle in yeast. Stir to combine.
Set aside for at least 20 minutes, letting it expand and bubble.
After 20 minutes, combine flours, salt and yeast mixture in a large bowl. If using semolina flour, stir in first, then add the rest.
When dough becomes difficult to stir with a wooden spoon, turn out of bowl onto a lightly floured smooth surface.
Begin kneading by hand. Add small amounts of flour, as needed, so dough is not sticking to hands and surface.
Knead at least 10 minutes, squeezing and folding dough over on itself, pushing with heels of both hands. I like to pick the dough up and throw it down hard onto kneading surface several times. Husband likes punching it.
When dough becomes smooth and elastic, form into a ball.
Lightly wipe a large bowl with olive oil. Place dough in bowl. Turn once to coat both sides in oil. Cover with a clean kitchen towel.
Set aside to rise 45 min. to an hour or until doubled in bulk.
Punch down, reshape dough, and cover. Let it rise once or twice more as you wish. It’s not necessary to do multiple risings, but time gives more structure and flavor to the dough.
Preheat oven to 465 degrees F.
Wipe or spray pizza pans lightly with olive oil. Optional to sprinkle pans with semolina flour.
Roll out sections of dough as thinly as possible to fit prepared pans.
Arrange toppings on dough. Less is more with homemade pizza. This keeps crust from becoming soggy and heavy.
Bake in preheated oven to desired doneness. Start checking at 10-12 min. Watch the edges so they don’t get too brown.
Remove from pans and cut into slices. Kitchen scissors work great.

Toppings:

Unlimited variety
Individual preferences rule
Allow guests to create their own pizza topping combination

Toppings and Sauce suggestions: light brushing of red pesto, basil pesto, tomato sauce or olive oil over unbaked dough

Thinly sliced [or diced] garlic cloves–always
Red pepper flakes or sliced fresh chili peppers–optional
Meat–chicken, prosciutto, pepperoni, sausage
Or no meat
Roasted vegetables such as eggplant, broccoli or cauliflower
Raw veggies like sweet peppers, mushrooms, black olives, onions or shallots
Toasted pine nuts
Anything else

Cheese:

I like freshly grated Parmesan, only, over top of ingredients.
Husband mixes a little fresh buffalo mozzarella, or goat cheese, or mixed grated cheeses with a topping of Parmesan.

Final Flourish:

Fresh arugula or baby spinach strewn over cooked pizza adds a bite of salad and green. Add before serving or let people help themselves table side.
Champagne is our pizza beverage of choice. There is some kind of chemistry going on there too. In your home, family choice rules.

champagne sipping for assembling and eating

Final Note:

Practice makes perfect. Play with proportions until you are comfortable with the sequence of steps. You won’t need a recipe if you make it regularly.
This makes a LOT of dough, which is efficient for later use.
It freezes well in zip lock bags and thaws easily. Place in refrigerator overnight or on the countertop until soft.
Roll out on lightly floured surface and proceed with toppings.
Make friends and family happy! Pizza night!

stir to mix flour, salt and yeast mixture

turn lump of dough out onto floured surface — stir to mix flour, salt and yeast mixture

pushing, pulling, flattening — begin kneading by hand

after 10 or more minutes of kneading, form into ball

place dough in lightly oiled bowl, turn once to coat top and bottom

let rise and double in bulk — place dough in lightly oiled bowl, turn once to coat top and bottom

let rise again — punch dough down and reform into ball

take sections of dough and begin to roll into a circle

flat and thin — take sections of dough and begin to roll into a circle

dinner for guests — kitchen scissors for cutting slices

People Who Pull the Magic Out of You

March 17, 2019May 8, 2025 / wendyulfers / 33 Comments

I knew when I met you an adventure was going to happen. –Winnie-the-Pooh

The important relationships in my life are best explained by this phrase: Stick with people who pull the magic out of you and not the madness. These are the people who fill my gaps with their strengths. They have characteristics I love and want to absorb when we are together. They are the ones with whom I am always comfortable.

I have written about my overseas friend, Janmarie in an earlier story, Hellenic Halloumi. We saw each other almost every day for the three years we overlapped while living in Nicosia, Cyprus. She came to my kitchen table five mornings a week for coffee and conversation, after dropping off her children at the International School.

In 1993, our family moved from Cyprus to Taiwan and the daily connection was left behind. It was long before emails or international phone calls were common so we lost touch with the changes in each other’s lives. In 2018, during our last year of being overseas, Janmarie was living in Beirut, Lebanon while I was in Paris. She urged me to visit her before leaving Europe. I didn’t hesitate to say, “Yes”.

Friends are the family you choose. –Jess C. Scott

In an overseas lifestyle, friendships tend to be intense and become surrogate family on holidays, vacations, and for celebrations.

My mother visited us the first Christmas we lived in Taiwan. We had just arrived a few months earlier. She was surprised by the closeness and quality of friendships we had already established. She said that we were at a depth of relationship and caring about people we had known for only months that could take years to develop at home.

Having lived in Singapore and Cyprus before, we knew that filling in the details of our home away from home started with the people who came into our lives by chance…and shared geography.

Janmarie met me at the airport in Beirut. We slipped into easy conversation on the way to her apartment as if it had been 25 minutes instead of 25 years. She told me how important it was to her that I made the effort to come to her home, how much it honored her, and our friendship.

A true friend is one you can go extended periods without seeing or talking to, yet the moment you are back in touch it’s like no time has passed at all.–Ellie Wade

Janmarie’s plan was to immerse me in the beauty and culture of Lebanon. Generosity and freshly prepared food are hallmarks of Lebanese hospitality. After we arrived at her apartment, the dining room table was laid with an array of home-prepared food made for my visit.

Because I had watched Janmarie feed her family in Cyprus, I knew the importance and love that goes into making nourishing and delicious meals followed by sitting ” à la table en famille” in Lebanese/American households. An abundantly laid table with my friend’s vivacious spirit was the perfect beginning.

Janmarie introduced me to Marti, an American of Lebanese heritage who grew up in Kansas and now lives in an apartment in the same building. She is a scholar and an intellectual, studying the Quran with a private teacher, working her way through reading and reciting all of the holy prayers in Arabic. Marti became a new friend because of an old friend. We connected right away.

The three of us took a day trip outside Beirut to the beautiful Shouf Mountains and the picturesque village of Deir el-Qamar [Monastery of the Moon], which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Along the way we stopped for coffee and a typical pastry snack, ka’ak [Arabic for cake]. It was savory rather than sweet–a ring shaped bread “purse” filled with cheese and covered in sesame seeds. At lunchtime we dined al fresco, under trees overhanging a restaurant patio, with freshly prepared traditional dishes that we shared.

My favorite cultural experience was the “Hubbly Bubbly” ritual. This is a tall water pipe that sits on the floor and is used for vaporizing flavored tobacco. It is available in every bar, restaurant or café. Janmarie chose a mint/lemon flavor for me. Not a smoker by habit, but there was enjoyment in relaxing with friends and making big puffs of smoke from an aromatic hookah in the midst of others doing the same. When in Lebanon, do as…

We spoke about the Cyprus years when our children were young and life had a different framework. But we shifted seamlessly to exchanging stories of experiences, perspectives and beliefs that define who we are today. It’s an important quality for ongoing friendships–each person capable of keeping the relationship moving forward while savoring shared times from the past.

The day before I left, I asked Janmarie to cook one of my favorite Lebanese dishes, Mujadarah. She taught me to make it years ago when my cooking specialized in one-dish meals for the family. Mujadarah is a lentil/rice casserole smothered in fried onions. I probably served it alone because it is flavorful and filling. The version she made for me was finished with a lemon-y dressed cabbage salad over the top. I finally learned to make a complete one dish meal, salad included!

There are reasons, perhaps subconscious, as to why we want to return to certain friendships. And why others remain at a distance. There are people in our lives where any amount of time spent with them is just right, and exactly what we need. We swoop into their orbit because they pull out our better selves, even our best selves. And when a friend knows the joy in your company that you feel in theirs…then the magic is complete.

…And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit. –Kahlil Gibran, “On Friendship”

MUJADARAH WITH CABBAGE SALAD-Serves 4

1 C. dry lentils
¾ C. dry rice
Cook the lentils and rice separately. [Leftover rice works great.] Mix cooked ingredients together in a decorative bowl. Season to taste with salt and olive oil.
Cut two onions into thin slices. Deep fry onions in oil until crispy and brown. [I like to use less oil and sauté onions very slowly until caramelized, but you have to be patient, watch and stir them so they don’t burn.]
Smother the top of the lentil/rice combo with cooked onions.

Cabbage salad:

2 C. finely sliced cabbage
2 cloves garlic, minced [or probably more]
¼ C. olive oil
¼ C. freshly squeezed lemon juice [or more]. Can use vinegar, but lemon is so right for this!
½ t. salt
Pomegranate seeds [not optional as they add color and zing.]
Optional: 2 T fresh or 1 T. dried mint, also green onions

The Dressing:

Pound garlic and salt in mortar and pestle.
Add lemon juice [or vinegar] and olive oil.
Whisk together and pour over cabbage.
Toss. Refrigerate 1 hour or so to blend flavors.
Adjust seasonings.

To Serve:

Place Mujadarah on a plate. Top with cabbage salad. Salad must be crunchy because the cabbage rules!–Janmarie

dinner with candles, wine, and mujadarah at home

My Favorite Kind of Teenager

January 28, 2019June 24, 2020 / wendyulfers / 10 Comments

My favorite kind of integrated person–some of each thing and not too much of any one. –Gabrielle Hamilton, owner of Prune Restaurant, author of Blood, Bones & Butter

Prune Restaurant, 54 E. 1st St, New York, NY

Two great-nieces came to stay with us in Princeton, New Jersey over a winter holiday weekend. The trip was a Christmas gift from their parents. They arrived from the Midwest, St. Louis, Missouri, which is my birthplace too.

The girls are “16 going on 17”, and since we live in proximity to New York City it seemed like a fine place to send them on a cousin adventure.

The weekend was a mixture of a full on activity in NYC balanced with some leisurely relaxation at home. One day–an early morning train to Penn Station, three hour shopping spree in Soho, a Broadway matinee [Hamilton!], followed by dinner at Prune Restaurant in East Village. The next day–a sleep-in/pajama morning, breakfast in bed, and binge watching reruns of a favorite TV series.

Over three days, I learned the trending social media sites that teens use as well as a photo editing/filter app that I will use [VSCO]. I waited outside dressing rooms as clothing options were tried on, modeled, considered, or rejected. Only the very cutest made the final cut to the checkout line.

On the last day, before departing to the airport, the girls shared with us their favorite things about the weekend. Then I spoke up, because I wanted them to know there was a best part of the visit for me, too.

It was simply this–I loved observing, and then knowing, how confident they are in their ability to talk about anything–high school, friends, teachers, popular culture, university options, career wonderments. Most importantly, when asked a direct question requiring an opinion, a preference, or a desire, they had thoughtful, ready answers. Two young women with a point of view!

When these girls were given choices, there was no dilly-dallying around, no hemming and hawing, no shrugging of shoulders or murmuring, “I don’t know” or “I don’t care” or “Whatever you think”.

Plans and logistics seamlessly came together because there was no second-guessing. I didn’t have to be in charge of every thing. Their ease in speaking up was a gift that led us forward. It allowed us to recalibrate or mix things up. And to fine tune how we enjoyed time together over the weekend.

In the best circumstances, a person begins to develop self-confidence, including the ability to express one’s own ideas and thoughts during childhood and adolescence. Some develop it later, after leaving home and living independently. And some people find it a challenge throughout life. There are adults who hedge and defer and cannot give a straight answer to the simple question, “What do you want…?”

I don’t know how or when my nieces became so comfortable in their own skins. It is testimony to guidance from home, influences in school, the community and friendships.

The girls’ maturing confidence reminded me of an M.F.K. Fisher story, which I shared with them. Fisher wrote about a cross-country train trip where she learned to use her own voice and life changed forever, in a good way. She began to speak up almost a century ago.

Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher was 19 years old in the mid-1920s when she was sent to school in Illinois from California. She was both naïve and extremely self-conscious. Her words follow, in bold italics:

“I must have been a trial, or at least a bore, on that trip. I was horribly self-conscious; I wanted everybody to look at me and think me the most fascinating creature in the world, and yet I died a small hideous death if I saw even one person throw a casual glance at me…”

Her travelling companion on the train was her mother’s brother, Uncle Evans. They ate together every night in the dining car. From the first evening meal, he began teaching her to really look at a menu, to use deliberation and care when deciding what to eat, and never make decisions haphazardly or with phony indifference.

“…I would glance hastily at the menu and then murmur the name of something familiar, like lamb chops. ‘But you know what lamb chops taste like,’ my uncle would say casually. ‘Why not have something exciting instead?’”

Then her uncle would order food that seemed quite exotic at the time such as Eastern scallops and an avocado salad with fresh lime. Over the next five days she began to feel more comfortable, enjoying their meal times together. When the train reached Chicago, Uncle Evan’s son, her older cousin, met them for dinner. Suddenly Mary Frances lost her confidence, and her way. Asked what she would like to eat, she averted her gaze and mumbled, “Oh, anything…anything, thank you.”

“’Anything,’ I said, and then I looked at my uncle, and saw through all my gaucherie, my really painful wish to be sophisticated and polished before him and his brilliant son, that he was looking back at me with a cold speculative somewhat disgusted look in his brown eyes.

It was as if he were saying, ‘You stupid uncouth young ninny, how dare you say such a thoughtless thing, when I bother to bring you to a good place to eat, when I bother to spend my time and my son’s time on you, when I have been so patient with you for the last five days?’

I don’t know how long all that took, but I knew that it was a very important time in my life. I looked at my menu, really looked with all my brain, for the first time.

‘Just a minute, please,’ I said, very calmly. I stayed quite cool, like a surgeon when he begins an operation…Finally I said to Uncle Evans, without batting an eye, ‘I’d like iced consommé, please, and then sweetbreads sous cloche and a watercress salad…and I’ll order the rest later.’

I remember he sat back in his chair a little, and I knew that he was proud of me and very fond of me. I was too.

And never since then have I let myself say, or even think, ‘Oh, anything,’ about a meal, even if I had to eat it alone with death in the house or in my heart.” **

It doesn’t necessarily matter when a person learns to speak with confidence and purpose, but it matters very much that they eventually do. My nieces are clearly on the way.

That evening, after the Hamilton performance, the three of us sat at the black marble counter facing the antique fuzzy mirror behind the bar in Prune Restaurant. I told the girls that any food choice, no matter how simple, would be delicious prepared by this chef. We discussed options and then ordered.

Elizabeth chose soup and then a plate of tender potatoes and herbs to satisfy her tastes. Emily and I had different soups and then split the duck breast with white beans and sautéed root vegetables. Conversation flowed between bites as we sampled each other’s fare. The finale was sharing three desserts and deciding, unanimously, which one was best. “Lemon Semifreddo” drizzled with extra virgin olive oil and sea salt. Oh My!

Dining in French bistro ambience, with good food, and easy banter was a fine way to end an event filled day, as I hoped it would be. Each of us will surely hold onto different stories and memories from the time together.

But for me, it will always be this–a snapshot moment of two lovely nieces when they were sixteen years old. They came, and they readily shared the best parts of themselves. They showed me that my favorite kind of teenager is one with a few life lessons already in place, integrated with “some of each thing and not too much of any one.”

**Excerpts from the chapter “The Measure of My Powers” in The Gastronomical Me by M.F.K Fisher, compiled in The Art of Eating, published by Collier Books, Macmillan Publishing Company, NY.

Million Mile Stories

December 17, 2018May 8, 2025 / wendyulfers / 11 Comments

I have flown a million miles over the 31 years we lived overseas. As the miles accumulated so did stories of airports and airplanes. One of them, now part of family lore, involved a plane departing with my child but without me.

There are two other unforgettable stories about one airport in particular, the old Hong Kong Kai Tak International. It closed 20 years ago, in 1998, after serving the city for 73 years. In the late 1980s we used it for three years to fly from the U.S. to our home overseas in Singapore. It was a 24 hour trip from Denver, Colorado with layovers in California and Hong Kong before landing at Singapore’s Changi Airport.

One decade and two international moves later, a contemporary oil painting by an artist friend in Taiwan transported me back to the first, spectacular, pulse-racing landing we made into Hong Kong.

In 1999, Heloiza, who is a Brazilian artist, had a show of her oil paintings in Taipei, Taiwan. Strolling the array of artwork, I saw the title “Rooftops” next to a large canvas. Looking from the title to the painting, something shivered through me. Art is supposed to create emotions like this. When I looked again, I had a visceral flashback to 1987, the summer we left Colorado and moved to southeast Asia. Now, I wanted to own that painting.

In the years since Taiwan, “Rooftops” has hung in our home in the “altstadt” in Oberursel, Germany, later above an elaborately carved marble fireplace in Paris, and now in the living room of an apartment in Princeton, New Jersey.

Neither of our two children understand why I love this painting. One summer, our son Adam stayed in Taipei to work while the rest of the family was on home leave. He disliked it so much that he removed it from the wall and stashed it out of sight until August.

Adam was only 5, 6, and 7 years old during those early years overseas. He doesn’t remember what made this particular piece of art “real” for me. Or why I keep dragging it around the world to hang in a place of prominence in our homes.

Hong Kong’s Kai Tak International was a city airport in the midst of densely populated Kowloon. There were mountains and hills and multi-story apartment buildings surrounding it. The runway protruded into the sea. Reclaimed land kept extending its’ length as airplanes grew bigger.

But there was something even more remarkable about it than just longevity. Pilots of all airlines regarded it as one of the most difficult airports in the world to land a jet smoothly and safely. Because Kai Tak was renowned for its’ challenging, hair-raising approach to the runway. For a spectator on the ground witnessing jumbo airliners land was eye-popping entertainment. As a passenger in a window seat–it took my breath away.

One commercial pilot with 30+ years of experience remembers, “As a pilot, it was totally unique. It was the only major airport in the world that required a 45-degree turn below 500 feet to line up with the runway, literally flying between the high-rise buildings, passing close to the famous orange and white checkerboard as you made that final turn toward the runway.”

making the turn with checkerboard marker

With two sleeping children who were oblivious, I watched with my forehead pressed against the window while the pilot executed that sharply arced turn to align with the runway. As the engines decelerated, the fuselage and wings seemed to barely skim the flat tops of square-shaped apartment buildings–block after block after block of them. In slow and slower motion, I looked down onto rooftops, laundry flapping on clotheslines, children playing, and Chinese faces with features easily distinguishable, turned upward. It was a bird’s eye view teeming with life.

Landing at Kai Tak was tricky partly because of a prominent hill blocking what would normally be a straight-on approach to the runway. Another daunting reason for a truly “white knuckle” landing was inclement weather.

A Cathay Pacific pilot reflects, “This [landing on runway 13] was quite a challenge, especially in strong wind conditions. As Cathay pilots, we had plenty of practice and became very adept at flying the approach…but it was quite a challenge for pilots from other airlines, especially in the more demanding flying conditions, as they might only come into Kai Tak once a year.”

Wind was one very big problem. Rain and low ceiling cloud cover were another. Because of the unique approach over the city, it was important for pilots to have a good view of the runway in order to avoid overshooting the turn on the approach.

A retired pilot recalls watching unsuccessful landings from the ground. “Being at the Kai Tak car park watching airplanes land in heavy rain could be very worrying. The pilots could not see the runway, and landing over Kowloon, you had to be visual with the runway. Some [pilots] seemed to wait a little longer than others before they aborted the landing and went around for another go. Some would appear out of the low clouds on the approach path, then power up and vanish back into the clouds.”

Another year I was traveling alone back to Singapore via Hong Kong. The descent began in extremely foul weather. There was rock and roll turbulence, heavy rain, and no visibility as we neared the airport. Everyone strapped in, no rooftop views, just a wish and a prayer to be on solid ground. The plane angled and tipped drastically with a big “bump”. Suddenly, the engines powered into high acceleration as the nose pulled upward sharply. We were pinned back in our seats, gripping armrests. The cabin was silent. No explanation from the flight deck. We swung around for another try.

Vivid memories tie me to that now defunct airport of crazy turns, aborted landings, and inhabited rooftops appearing like colorful concrete terraced gardens in the sky.

And that is why a painting always hangs on a wall of our home depicting blocky, geometrically aligned squares and rectangles in colors of red, blue, yellow, green, and mustard brown.

The other story, mentioned as family lore at the beginning of this story, has tried to remain buried at the bottom of mothering mistakes. But it is the one our son most definitely remembers. In today’s world of air travel the same series of circumstances would never happen again. It was bad enough 30 years ago.

Our first home leave trip was not until 1989, the second summer away from the U.S. I made the trip alone with the children, husband coming later. Four-year old daughter did not sleep for the interminable hours from Singapore to Hong Kong to California to Arizona where we had one final flight before meeting grandparents in Iowa.

She passed out in deep slumber as we landed at the Phoenix airport. There was no plane change, simply a one-hour layover to pick up additional passengers and a new crew. I asked the flight attendant if I could leave soundly sleeping child to run into terminal and make a phone call about our very delayed arrival to Des Moines.

Taking seven-year-old son, we disembarked and found the pay phones. Twenty minutes later we were back at the gate.

The jet-way door was locked. The plane was no longer there. A new crew had boarded quickly and, because the flight was well behind schedule, a decision was made to depart right away. I went into panic mode, pleading that my child was asleep in the back of the plane. IT COULD NOT POSSIBLY HAVE LEFT! The flight attendant who had [minutes before] agreed to my brief leave-taking “forgot” to mention sleeping child. The gate agent told me it was too late, the plane was in the sky.

In actuality, the plane taxied to the departure runway, was cleared for take off and began acceleration. As a new crew member prepared to take her jump seat, she discovered a small girl in the back of the plane with no adult nearby. A hasty call to the flight deck and jet engines were powered down seconds before lift off. The plane returned to the gate.

I did not look at the faces of the other passengers as I re-boarded, holding tightly to the hand of the child with me. I knew they were appalled at the situation and angry about the further delay.

In the long walk to the back of the plane, I focused only on the shining face of my now awake child, eyes blinking and small blond head bobbling back and forth above the seat, calmly wondering what was going on.

Two stories–one of a plane swooping low over flat rooftops teeming with life, the other of a plane that left the gate…early. A painting reminds me of one. A heart-stopping memory will not let me forget the other.

Both are reminders that life unfolds as a collection of stories–some of them expand the world we know, as when we see or do something extraordinary, and others remind us there is a world of unexpected, too.

Somewhere in between is where we live.

Becoming a Casual Animal

November 23, 2018May 8, 2025 / wendyulfers / 16 Comments

…Every one of us is called upon, perhaps many times, to start a new life…to embrace one possibility after another…that is surely the basic instinct…–Barbara Kingsolver, High Tide in Tucson

In 1989 Ray Oldenburg coined the term “third place” to define an essential zone separate from home and the people you live with [“first place”] and work [“second place”]. Third place is your hangout, an informal social space with no dress code and a welcoming vibe that invites you to return again and again.

A third place is also one’s anchor to community life. You are drawn to it because it is socially fun, playful, and light-hearted. It’s where you go to chew the fat, discuss issues, ventilate, play games, or get to know someone. It is “…where you relax in public, encounter familiar faces and make new acquaintances.”

Third place is like pitching a tent in your back yard. It is home away from home.

When life opportunities create a geography change and your third place is left behind, it’s important to find a new one. And if what you are looking for can’t be found after searching, a creative instinct might emerge “…to start a new life…to embrace one possibility after another”.

This is Kyle’s story. He grew up in Kansas, in the heartland of America. From the age of five, he began drawing images–people, animals and made up characters. Riding in the car during family vacations, he drew the storylines from books-on-tapes while the rest of the family listened. While still a high school student, Kyle knew he would pursue an artistic course of study at university. He graduated in Fine Arts and Graphic Design.

In 2006, Kyle’s first job took him away from home and long-term friends to Fort Collins, Colorado. He started out living in the basement of a relative’s house. It was isolating for a young man. He needed friends his own age and a place to socialize with them.

A booming craft beer industry was the catalyst for many microbrewery openings in Fort Collins. Kyle found his “third place”, along with a friendly social circle, in the evolving scene.

Later, in a widening circle of mutual friends, Kyle met Lara. They enjoyed camaraderie in the breweries, but also shared a strong sense of community service. Together they coached Special Olympic basketball and softball for disabled adults.

When Lara accepted a new job in another state, Kyle’s mother said, “I thought he would never leave Colorado. So when he followed Lara to Kansas City, I knew she was the one he would marry.” They did.

In 2014, the craft brewery scene in Kansas City, Missouri was not as mature as the one left behind in Colorado. Lara and Kyle searched but couldn’t find the informal, social environment they were looking for in their new hometown.

Creative “can do” instincts took over. Kyle had experimented with beer making in the past. Now he became serious, bought equipment, and began home brewing in the basement. He went to weekend fairs, gave away samples, and won some tasting competitions, too. Feedback was consistent and positive.

He read book after book about the chemistry of beer making, industrial brewing equipment, hops and grains and flavor additives as well as how to open a small business. He enrolled in the American Brewer’s Guild Intensive Brewing Science and Engineering program. The final weeks of coursework were on site in Vermont.

Kyle befriended local KC brewers by cold calling them. He volunteered to work one day each week to help them brew commercial batches. He gained knowledge and a warm welcome into the community of micro-brewers. By now an idea was actively fermenting.

Screen Shot 2018-11-21 at 19.27.28 2 — logo designed by kyle

Over the next couple of years, Kyle and Lara drafted a business plan, found real estate property to buy, cultivated investors, and a bank loan. In a former commercial garage space, Kyle designed a back-of-the-house brewery with a front-of-the-house taproom. Doing most of the interior construction, alongside family members who pitched in time and expertise, Lara and Kyle founded a craft brewery on the principle of creating a social community space and then giving back to it.

Screen Shot 2018-11-20 at 09.12.56 — kyle and his dad building the deck

Screen Shot 2018-11-20 at 11.53.22 — lara after new equipment installation

In early February 2018, Casual Animal Brewing Company opened its’ doors at 1725 McGee Street in the Crossroads area of downtown Kansas City, Missouri. Their signature motto is: “Laid back beers that tap into your wild side.”

Casual Animal runs eleven full taps. Each has its’ own beer style, name, and an original logo of Kyle’s design. Animals are a recurring theme. Names are metaphorically linked to the style of brew. Customer favorites include Chaos Monkey [a banana cream pie ale], to Honey Wheat light ale, Nomo Rhino IPA, Branch Out Stout, and Hop The Fence IPL.

Screen Shot 2018-11-20 at 12.02.55 — one “flight” is 5 tasting choices

menu changes by popular requests and brewer’s creative recipes

Screen Shot 2018-11-20 at 09.11.54 — full house

Screen Shot 2018-11-20 at 11.40.51 — front door open, weather permitting

rotating t-shirt and hat designs by kyle

brewery paintings by kyle

art graphic wallpaper

Tying into Kyle and Lara’s commitment to community service, Casual Animal taps into the ethic of “giving back” by designating a rotating beer called Local Motive. The beer style changes quarterly along with the charitable organization the staff votes on to support. Two dollars of every pint of Local Motive sold is donated. In-house events promote the spirit of the current charity.

Screen Shot 2018-11-20 at 09.09.53 — brut IPA featured for one local motive promotion

designed by kyle–graphics and artwork for quarterly local motive tap

The most recent charity promotion was the Kansas City Pet Project, a nonprofit pet shelter that guarantees every stray animal a home. Kittens and puppies were brought into the brewery for customers to play with and cuddle. A completely contagious combination–adorable baby animals plus eleven beer styles equals fun AND donation success!

KC Pet Project nite

Unless you are a real brewer, all there is to know about the process of grain and hops and water turning into deliciously drinkable beer is the basics of what happens in Casual Animal’s back room. Inside a series of huge shiny stainless steel tanks, Kyle’s chemistry know-how is mixed with the help of fermentation, time…and recipe magic.

Hot Liquid Tank water is piped into the Mashtun Tank where grains are mixed together and cooked. Next, this mash up is transferred to the Brew Kettle where hops [and sometimes other flavors] are added. After time in the Kettle, the liquid is piped into the Fermenting Tank, leaving behind all the grain residue. Now yeast is added and fermentation begins. This takes approximately two weeks depending on the kind of beer. From the Fermentation Tank, beer is transferred to the Brite Tank for carbonation and clarifying. And finally, kegs are filled and stored in the massive walk-in refrigerator that feeds the taps at the front-of-the-house. 217 gallons of beer per brew.

dividing brewery from taproom

kyle on brew day

hot liquid tank

mashtun mixes grains with water

brew kettle where hops added

fermentation tanks plus one brite tank

grain residue inside brew kettle

cleanup takes longer than brewing

removing grain mash which is picked up by local farmer for animal feed

Cycle complete. As for the magic? Well, every time I sip Casual Animal’s velvety dark nitro stout, it’s easy to believe in magic.

When I asked Kyle to talk about his favorite beer tastes, he said, “Well, it depends on the day. On cold, snowy days, I would say smooth, slight malty sweetness, and roast-y to describe a tasty pint of Nitro Stout. Other days it might be an IPA with resin-y, fruity, and bitter characteristics imparted by the hops. Now, is anyone thirsty?”

There is passion and precision in Kyle’s word selection that describes every beer Casual Animal makes. That same passion speaks of a man who dreamed of possibilities and pursued them with intense preparation. And labor. And love.

The truth is, when Kyle couldn’t find his “third place”–he built one.

…Let me be a good animal today. Let me dance in the waves of my private tide, the habits of survival and love…–Barbara Kingsolver, High Tide in Tucson

Casual Animal Brewing Company, 1725 McGee St., Kansas City, Missouri 64108

www.casualanimalbrewing.com

Instagram and Facebook: Casual Animal Brewing Co.

On 10-10-18, Lara and Kyle produced a new brand of casual animal sweetness and introduced her to the world. Welcome Sloan Kasey!

Home Is Where You Are, Even Overseas

September 20, 2018May 8, 2025 / wendyulfers / 24 Comments

A new experience can be extremely pleasurable, or extremely irritating, or somewhere in between, and you never know until you try it out. ―Lemony Snicket, The Blank Book

There are myriad ways to experiment with life. Moving away from the known or familiar is one way to keep things interesting. Finding enriching friendships is another.

In the late 1980’s, a new job opportunity nudged our family geographically away from the comfort zone in middle America. Our two children were young and adaptable. As the decision-making adults we took a chance–letting go of two jobs, two cars, a house in the ‘burbs of Denver, Colorado. Just for a couple of years. We moved to Southeast Asia.

From the beginning, everything we saw, smelled, ate, drank, or experienced in those first years in Singapore laid the foundation for what followed over the next three decades. We moved to four other countries. Singapore was the catalyst to keep the experiment going.

My husband remembers pacing the aisles of the airplane as we flew there for the first time, children sleeping peacefully, worrying about what he had wrought on our family. How would we adapt a very American lifestyle to this small, tropical, island-state with three predominant cultures–Chinese, Malaysian, and Indian?

Actually, it was easier than we imagined. Because of the people we met, the friends we made–living a little off balance, in the unknown, became our new norm. The first important overseas experience happened when I met my friend, Jan.

Jan was an operating room nurse–we had that in common–who left her job to follow a husband who worked in Germany and then Singapore. We both missed the camaraderie of our co-workers and the hospital environment. Here we were, in a foreign country, unable to work professionally. It was time to find something else to do.

still a lot of bicycles in 1987, singapore

There was a refugee camp located in a former British barracks on Hawkins Road in the Sembawang area of Singapore. It was established after the fall of Saigon in 1975 for Vietnamese “Boat People”. Because Singapore did not accept refugees, this camp was a transit stop before deportation to countries accepting them. Volunteer nurses were needed. Jan signed us up.

We took long bus rides to the north of the island to work in the clinic. Giving immunizations, tending injuries, dressing wounds, treating minor illnesses in men, women and children who usually spoke no English, but knew how to smile in gratitude. A steady influx of refugees created long lines of those needing help. I jumped feet first into learning the risks that other people take, too.

risking all for a new life

singapore refugee camp, 1975-1996

Another friendship, with Sandy, provided something different. She was also an American nurse who moved to Singapore with a husband and three children several years before we did. It didn’t take long for her to start a business by filling suitcases with wholesale women’s clothing made in Hong Kong and selling them out of her home. Clothing in Singapore in the ‘80s was available only in small Asian sizes and styles. Non-Asian women were an eager and ready market for her niche.

updated façades, little india, 2017

singapore little india shops, 2017

merlion park and a modern city backdrop, 2017

Sandy’s home was a cozy, eclectic mix of styles and textures that I loved. When I asked where she found certain pieces of furniture or funky artifacts, she said, “We should go Kampong shopping.”

The word “Kampong” is from the Malay language, meaning village. Throughout Singapore’s early history, and well into the 20^thcentury, kampongs were settlements of houses and small shops where the indigenous population lived. Initially, huts were built with palm-thatched roofs designed to let the air pass through and temper the heat of tropical sun. Later, wood and zinc replaced thatch because it leaked like a sieve in monsoon rains and housed centipedes and other creepy crawlies that dropped down from overhead.

The kampong communities were close-knit, doors left open, children of Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Eurasian culture played together seamlessly. Rainwater was collected. Cats, dogs and chickens roamed in co-existence. Later, generators that sometimes worked brought electricity.

Screen Shot 2018-09-16 at 13.21.35 — map of known singapore kampong locations

Colonial British government began addressing overcrowding and poor hygienic conditions within the kampongs in the early 1900s. Public housing began in earnest after WWII as the Singaporean population rapidly increased.

In 1960, (prior to independence in 1965) the Housing Development Board [HDB] was established to further urban renewal. Mass demolition of shop houses and kampongs began to build affordable, low cost, high-rise, housing estates for all Singaporeans. HDB flats led to the creation of “new towns” throughout the island.

Transition from kampong living to government sanctioned housing flats allowed people to easily enjoy clean water, electricity and gas. However, life changed dramatically in the sense of decreased community spirit, less neighbor interaction, and a population of children who grew up playing on concrete, not in nature.

By the time we moved to Singapore many kampongs had been partially bulldozed or completely razed as residents moved on to modern living. Tropical heat, humidity, and prolific vegetation growth from daily rains rapidly invaded and took over abandoned sites.

remains of kampong house

steps leading to nowhere

the jungle takes over in time

Sandy knew locations of deserted kampongs where, if you dared to venture into the overgrowth of tenacious weeds and jungle vines, dodge snakes and crawling things, repel dengue-fever-bearing mosquitoes, you could unearth left behind possessions with potential for renewal and use.

It was the Singapore equivalent of an archeological dig, with a recycling component. Here we witnessed the life of a community after the community had moved on.

Kampong shopping was always a dirty, sweaty proposition of hunting, excavation and fun. Rewards were in the discovery. We found crocks used for storing water, oil or food, incense burners, altar tables, tea pots, baskets, dragon pots, glass jars, marble lamp bases, teak tables, a wooden kitchen cabinet with rusted screens. We hauled our “treasures” home and spent hours cleaning or refinishing them. They functioned as decorative or usable artifacts, with a back-story.

kampong teapot

dragon pot

unearthed jar

altar table, refinished

ceramic pots for storing water or food

baskets refurbished

Initiation into the exciting world of Singaporean cuisine came from my friend, Mary, who was Singaporean Chinese, married to a German man. She was a tiny woman who loved food–as culturally important to her as her matrilineal family hierarchy. Mary would call me on the phone and say, “I’m picking you up to go eat. Right now!” The food in Singapore was, and is, phenomenal. This is the country where my taste buds learned to crave spices, with Mary as my guide.

We ventured to her favorite “Hawker Centres”–informal, open-air food stalls specializing in Chinese, Malaysian, Indonesian, or Indian food. Cooked to order on site, eaten with chopsticks while sitting on plastic stools at plastic tables on the sidewalk.

I tasted Nonya Laksa [Laksa Lemak] for the first time at Peranakan Place on Orchard Road–a spicy hot noodle soup in curried coconut broth with prawns and a quail egg. Carrot cake [Chai tow kway] is not cake and not carrots, but a favorite hawker dish of mine. Steamed white radish and rice flour cut into cubes and fried with garlic, eggs, preserved radish and other spices. Whatever Mary ordered I ate, sweated through, and loved.

nonya laksa

fried carrot cake

Peranakan Place pre-urban renewal, 1979

one rendition after renovation

current look in june 2017

Singapore was the beginning of making friends who lived as we did, away from the usual, outside the familiar. People who said “yes” to living outside of the box.

I thrived in our international moves because of every friend I made. Sometimes it was hard to leave one place to rebuild relationships in the next. And sometimes friendships were lost with the geographical changes. But shared experiences with every friend remain in my most important memories.

Creating relationships and life lessons is really what overseas living is about. In such a nomadic lifestyle, the key is making a home where you embrace friends as family.

Anywhere in the world.

A REASON, A SEASON, OR A LIFETIME

When someone is in your life for a REASON, it is usually to meet a need you have expressed. They have come to assist you through a difficulty, to provide you with guidance and support, to aid you physically, emotionally, or spiritually. They are there for the reason you need them to be.

Then, without any wrongdoing on your part, this person will say or do something to bring the relationship to an end. Sometimes, they die. Sometimes, they walk away. What we must realize is that our need has been met, our desire fulfilled; their work is done. The prayer you sent has been answered. Now it is time to move on.

Then people come into your life for a SEASON, because it is your turn to share, grow, or learn. These people bring you peace or make you laugh. They may teach you something you have never done. They give you an unbelievable amount of joy. It is real, but only for a passing season.

LIFETIME relationships teach lifetime lessons, things you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation. Your job is to accept the lesson, love the person, and put what you have learned to use in all other relationships and areas of your life.

–author unknown

Leaving Paris and Hemingway

August 13, 2018April 6, 2023 / wendyulfers / 29 Comments

It has been several months between writing stories while we packed up our life after 31 years overseas and repatriated home. Now there are new jobs to learn and new geographies to explore on the east coast of the U.S. And while there are other overseas adventures to share, this is my farewell to eight years in Paris.

boxes exit out the window

empty living room

window view

If ever a city were designed to distract us from our troubles, it would be Paris.–Thomas Jefferson

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris…then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast. –Ernest Hemingway

When I read Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea as a student, I found it dry as dust. Decades later, after devouring A Moveable Feast, his memoir to first wife Hadley set in 1920s Paris, our lives intersected more personally. Because I was living there.

My “earnest” infatuation with all things Hemingway began in 2010. It was more than literary interest. I walked up and down streets of the 5^thand 6^thArrondissements (neighborhoods) seeking addresses transcribed into my pocket-sized black moleskin notebook. I found the location of every apartment, restaurant, bar, and café where Hemingway was known to have lived, eaten, slept, talked, consumed alcohol, or written. More than 90 years later, in cafés where he nursed a single café crème for hours to keep his table and construct that “one perfect sentence”, I sat and read his books.

The first apartment where he and Hadley lived until the birth of their son, Jack, is marked with a plaque outside the entry door on rue du Cardinal Lemoine. The studio apartment he used for writing was around the corner from Place de la Contrascarpe on rue Descartes. He carried bundles of sticks up six flights of stairs to burn in the fireplace for winter heat.

plaque identifying 74 rue de cardinal lemoine

entry to apartment

rue descartes studio entry

top floor studio was where he wrote

Hemingway crossed through the Luxembourg Gardens, often passing by La Fontaine de Médicis, on his way to meet Gertrude Stein at her apartment on rue de Fleurus for conversation and counsel before the unfortunate rupture of their friendship.

la fontaine de médicis, jardin du luxembourg, paris

He borrowed books and talked with other struggling writers at the Shakespeare and Company bookstore owned by Sylvia Beach on 12, rue de l’Odeon. Sylvia lent him money when he was hungry, along with the books. Today, the original Shakespeare is a clothing boutique.

After WWII, Shakespeare and Co. re-opened across the river from Notre Dame. The owner, George Whitman, eventually passed it on to his daughter, Sylvia, named after Sylvia Beach. Under Sylvia Whitman, Shakespeare now encompasses two storefronts plus a café.

shakespeare and company, 37 rue de la bûcherie, 75005 paris

george whitman passed the torch to daughter sylvia in 2004

When Hemingway began an affair with Hadley’s girlfriend, Pauline Pfeiffer, the marriage ended on a sad note. After marrying Pauline, they lived on rue Férou near Saint Sulpice church. In this apartment he wrote A Farewell to Arms.

I read stories of the bar at the Ritz Hotel where Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and others convened for hours on end. Since Hemingway was a regular there for 30 years, and the bar was eventually named after him, it was on my list to know first hand.

Actual discovery did not begin until our last year in Paris due to an extensive four-year renovation of the entire Ritz infrastructure. Toward the end, a roof fire created even more delays before the reopening.

Bar Hemingway, a very small space in the Ritz footprint, has it’s own unique history. In the early 1920s, it began as a ladies bar or “steam room”, followed by a poets’ bar, and then a writers’ bar called Bertin’s. Bertin was a friend of Hemingway’s who gave him gambling tips. And more than a few free drinks. Ernest was a man who often counted on the generosity of others.

In 1979, Mohamed Al-Fayed (owner of Harrods, London) bought the Paris Ritz. That same year, Hemingway’s family officially named the “Hemingway Bar”. Three years later it closed for the next twelve years, 1982-1994. Two years after reopening, in 1996, the name was copyrighted as “Bar Hemingway Ritz Paris.”

the first menu of the newly reopened bar in 2016

Located on the backside of the hotel, it is most easily accessed from a small side street. But I like to enter via Place Vendôme, through the front door of the Ritz, where there are uniformed doormen. Walking down expansive high ceilinged hallways past splendidly decorated rooms where tea or drinks or food is served, I peek into display windows of the high-end shopping gallery. Turn another two corners, go down several steps and walk in the door of a cozy, wood-paneled room.

two small rooms

and a bar

Minimal changes were made here during the renovation. Woodwork was stripped and refinished and new lamps were added over the bar. The Hemingway paraphernalia is all there–books, magazine portraits, photographs with wives, friends, and dead animals, a black Corona typewriter like the one he used, a long barreled hunting rifle behind the copper bar, fishing rods, a boat propeller, and a bronze bust of his head.

Sometimes I would go with a girlfriend or two when it opened at 6 PM, other times with my husband on a weekend. But if I wanted to ask questions and learn more, I went by myself to claim an empty barstool and talk with head barman, Colin Field.

What is it that draws crowds of people every day to this little piece of real estate tucked into the backend of a high-class hotel? Is it romanticized lore of Hemingway’s life in Paris–from marriages to Hadley and Pauline in the 1920s, to working as a WWII correspondent in the ‘40s, a short-lived third marriage, spiced with competitive friendships and raucous fights with other painters and writers of the time? Or is it because of the drinks, many of which are original and creative but, at the same time, over-the-top expensive?

the signature martini

served with a frozen olive ice cube

and salty snacks

I believe Bar Hemingway’s current popularity continues to be about ambience and lore and cocktails, with the added garnish of Colin Field’s 24 year history there. His amiable personality, professional bartending and management skills, and vast anecdotal knowledge of famous past patrons have kept it high on the list of iconic places to visit.

In 1994, Colin was hired to reopen the Hemingway Bar [before the name change and after the twelve-year closure]. In the beginning, as the sole employee, he did everything single-handedly. But, he added a twist–keeping the bar open until 4:00AM when all others in Paris closed at 2:00AM. During times when it was too busy to manage alone, he recruited regulars to help–answering the phone, greeting and seating customers, taking orders. In exchange, their drinks were free.

Opening night, August 25, 1994, happened to be the 50^thAnniversary of the liberation of Paris in WWII. Jack Hemingway [son by Hadley, father of Margaux and Mariel] was invited and came for the party. It turned into a bash. People dressed in GI and MP costumes. A full line-up of army Jeeps was staged along the street outside. Chaos reigned inside. Hemingway would have loved it.

These days, there are five or six employees who serve a regular flow of clientele seven days a week from 6:00PM until 2:00AM. Colin continues to hold court behind the bar, chatting up customers and blending new drinks.

Shortly before our departure from Paris, I met friends at Bar Hemingway on a clear summer evening. They invited me for a final good-bye drink.

“new age caipirinha”, a lime smoothie plus

Conversation flowed as we reminisced about shared experiences and future plans. We mused about hiking together in Portugal and Spain on the Santiago de Compostela trail a couple years before. And then, it was time to part ways. Walking back through the corridors of the Ritz, we stopped outside to say good-bye on Place Vendôme.

There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties or what ease could be reached. It was always worth it and we received a return for whatever we brought to it. –E. Hemingway

Like Hemingway, Paris doesn’t end for me because I no longer live there. When I return, it will be with the happiness of years of wide-eyed discoveries, friendships for life, and the realization that…I will always be coming home.

Cow Seduction

May 7, 2018March 29, 2026 / wendyulfers / 14 Comments

When people hear that we are leaving our home in France after eight years, one question that invariably follows is, “What will you miss most?” My answer is not what they expect to hear.

What I will miss most are Norman cows.

Specifically, those geographically situated cows that graze on the sweet green grass of Normandy and produce the most delicious and flavorful butter in the world.

“Oh, don’t worry,” people will say, “you will find other good butter wherever you live.” I don’t think so. All butters are not the same. Neither are cows.

We have traveled to both upper and lower Normandy innumerable times during the past thirteen years while living in Germany and France. My first trip to the Normandy beaches and WWII sites was when we were living in Germany. During that excursion I had a personal epiphany to learn French–to use the local language every time we traveled to this region of northern France where we fervently loved the history, the solid stone architecture, and the people.

WWII history commemorated throughout Normandy

Eventually we moved to Paris and I did learn to speak passable French. Soon after came the discovery of how butter from Normandy transforms nondescript food, like breakfast toast or potatoes or steamed vegetables into something with incredible flavor. I fell hard for the crunch of sea salt crystals in butter-with-a-real-buttery-taste on otherwise dry or bland food. Now there is no turning back. I have been known to carry salted French butter home to Colorado, frozen, in an insulated container tucked deep inside my suitcase.

two favorites: sea salt crystals that crunch in your mouth

One weekend trip to lower Normandy, we stayed in an historic, privately owned château. It is also a bed and breakfast, with a fine dining room, which helps pay the taxes and upkeep on an ancient estate.

There were wineries to visit and sites to see each day, but we constantly veered off onto pot-holed, muddy, dirt roads to pay homage to cows. Just cows–grazing and standing around in fields. I wanted to study the source of my butter obsession, up close, in their natural environment.

During the Germany years, we belonged to a weekend hiking club. Every Sunday morning we traipsed off, en masse, through forests, hills and vineyards into the countryside. I laughed at a friend who stopped to take photos whenever a cow was in the landscape. When I asked why, he said, “I just like them.”

Well, now I like them, too, but for a reason. They give something special back because of being these cows. Norman cows are raised only for dairy. They roam. They eat nutrient flora and grassy greens in the hills and marshlands of the rolling countryside. They produce milk that is heavy and smooth. The fatty milk cream is the color of yellow buttercup flowers. The butter from this cream is sweet and delicious.

Why is French butter so irresistibly different? Two things. One, it often has a higher fat content [87%] compared to American butter [80%]. And secondly, the real secret behind the fineness of French butter is the way it is cultured.

Cream, separated from the milk, is allowed to ferment before it is churned. Thus, bacteria forms, sugar converts to lactic acid, and the result is a distinguishably creamier, velvet-ier, butter-ier taste.

American produced butter uses only pasteurized [uncultured] milk cream. The French, dedicated to quality, refuse to bypass the fermentation step.

Before industrialization all butter was produced the French way, in small batches, using natural fermentation. As the heavier cream rose to the top of the milk, it was skimmed off and stored until there was enough to churn. That was how bacteria got in and “cultured” the cream. It resulted in a taste that was “ripe” and delicious.

When I was a child, my paternal grandmother had a milk cow on her farm. I saw how the yellow cream rose thickly to the top of a container of fresh milk after it sat awhile. She used that cream to pour into coffee or to make desserts like strawberry shortcake with garden picked berries and a dollop of fresh whipped cream.

Today, with mass production, there is no skimming by hand and waiting around for natural processes. Cream is spun out of milk via machines. However, in France, a lactic acid producing culture is added to the separated cream and fermentation still takes place. The resulting butter taste is fuller and, to some, even a “nuttier” flavor.

It is well known that the French are extraordinarily fond of butter. Culturally they take it very seriously, and it is not lightly squandered. One memorable example of this occurred during my quirky two-month job assisting a female chef with cooking classes in her Parisian apartment. I functioned as the prep and clean up person during a gap before her new student intern arrived.

One day, as she was demonstrating her no-bake-pastry-tart recipe, an entire brick of opened butter, about one pound, fell off the counter. She stepped into it with the heel of her work shoes, almost skidding to the floor, but grabbed the counter just in time. Without missing a beat, she told me to pick it up and “clean it” as it was still usable.

She carried on with class while I “cleaned” the butter with “beaucoup de paper towels” as that was the only method I could think of. [No suggestion was offered.] Only a sliver of butter remained when I thought it was “clean enough”. After sculpting it into a small ball, I set it out of sight.

During 2017 there was a lot of published hype about a calamitous butter shortage coming to France. It was and wasn’t true. Because of a shortage in raw materials, for a time, there was a supply problem in grocery stores. Concurrently, exported sales increased as the Chinese decided they loved pastries made with French butter. In America, sugar had shifted to being the dietary enemy so butter demand increased across the Atlantic. Fears of mass shortage did not transpire but my restaurant friend, Laurel Sanderson, [Treize–A Baker’s Dozen, Paris] did stockpile it for several months because she is so dependent on butter for her baked fresh daily southern biscuits, cakes, and savory tarts.

Norman cows also produce milk for Camembert–the most famous cheese of the region. The village of Camembert resides in basse [lower] Normandy. The story is that in 1791 a Norman farmer, Marie Harel, while following the recipe from a priest who hailed from Brie, made some slight changes and improved it. Camembert was born.

Camembert de Normandie is a protected designation of origin. With this stamp, it can only be made from raw, unpasteurized milk from les vaches Normandies [cows from Normandy]. It is soft, with a fine rind covered in a “white duvet”. It is at least 45% fat, with a pungent aroma and stronger taste than Brie. When warmed it becomes even creamier and can be used as a dip for raw vegetables, potatoes, or bread. I serve it this way as an appetizer or light supper. It is typically sold whole, in rounds, inside thin wooden containers made of poplar.

How to make and serve baked camembert: “Not a Station, but a Place”–Paris to Avignon

There are many things I remember after more than a decade living, learning and experiencing European life. There are adventures, travel, and friends to reminisce about, food, wine, and restaurants to recall, even faux pas to laugh or write about.

Still, at the top of my list is “mes vaches Normandies”–those fabulous “buttah-making” cows that touched my senses and tastes in a forever kind of way. I’m often thinking of the next petit dèjeuner of wholegrain toasted baguette smeared with a melting pool of butter and sea salt crystals.

Ogden Nash, the American poet of light verse wrote, “Cows are of the bovine ilk: one end is moo and the other milk.”

True. But all cows are not the same. I happen to have been seduced by the Norman ones.

Care About Cast Iron

April 15, 2018August 19, 2024 / wendyulfers / 7 Comments

*cast iron skillet with lid–before seasoning*

A solid Dutch oven, a cast iron skillet, and an excellent knife with a fine blade–the good life. –Anonymous

Cast iron cookware is one of the things to have in your life–but only if you love it.

An iron skillet is a link to the past [one of the oldest cooking tools in any kitchen], relevant to the present and can be passed into the future. It connects you to the people who used it before–to the everydayness of their lives.

Cast iron is durable on top of the stove and inside the oven. It retains the flavor of foods cooked in it and is considered to be superior for cooking in general. Cast iron grabs heat and holds it. It is not Teflon, something you throw away when it becomes scratched and used. Cast iron will outlive you and begs to be passed on.

There aren’t many things in modern life that are passed down through generations and remain both beautiful and useful. –Ronni Lundy, historian of Appalachian food

*vintage cast iron, seasoned to the sheen of glass*

Older cast iron is considered by purists to be superior. It is made with higher quality raw materials and the interior surfaces are smoother. A good vintage pan will be completely black in color and almost glassy in the texture of its’ interior surface. Seasoned right it becomes nonstick. Pitted surfaces on newer cast iron allow food to stick. It’s also more difficult to season.

Several summers ago, I met “Cast Iron Don” in an antique mall in Saugatuck, Michigan when my daughter and I were on a mom/daughter getaway. Don is a consummate collector of vintage cast iron, owning more than 100 pieces. He uses only two.

Don offered a wealth of cast iron history and information when he spotted my interest in a marked “Griswold, Erie, PA” skillet for the reasonable price of $17.00. He said it was the best-priced-name-brand-cast-iron-piece in the whole market.

Cast iron cookware was made in the U.S. from the 18^th century to the first half of the 20^th century. Griswold, Wagner, and Sidney were brand names casting pans in foundries, which also made farm tools and weapons. Each piece was poured and polished by hand which took hours of human labor, but produced a notable difference. They were lighter, thinner, with a smoother interior.

Today, some cast iron pans are being made this way but, with labor costs as they are, prices are in the hundreds of dollars for a contemporary artisanal skillet. For the fun of a treasure hunt you can find vintage cast iron in your relatives’ kitchens, garage sales, estate auctions or flea markets at a fraction of the cost of anything new. Many of them will already be seasoned.

Well-seasoned cast iron is the equivalent of a broken in pair of well-loved jeans. This is what makes it both beautiful and utilitarian.

Cast iron is porous. To make a nonstick cooking surface it needs oil for protection. Seasoned correctly, oil bonds with the iron pores. When exposed to heat, the polymer chains link and form a durable, slick coating surface.

Back in Michigan, Cast Iron Don has refined his own techniques for rehabbing antique ironware. I don’t recommend any of his rather dangerous methods. Vats of lye, boiling water, hoses, and protective wearing apparel require a lot more time and caution than most consumers need to muster.

Rusted or mistreated skillets can often be restored with a simple steel wool scrubbing before re-seasoning. Or, use coarse salt mixed with oil and rub mixture around with a paper towel. For a super tough buildup of dirt and grime, place pan in a self-cleaning oven for one cycle. Sediment flakes off and can be wiped away.

After cleaning, the important next step is to season iron correctly.

Animal fat! Use lard, bacon grease or Crisco. [Do not use vegetable based oils because they leave a sticky residue and you have to start over, so no olive oil.]
Coat the entire surface including edges. Place upside down in 500 F. or 260 C. oven over a piece of foil. Bake 1 hour 15 minutes.
Cool gradually in oven with door ajar. Once thoroughly cooled, wipe off any excess oil.

Cast iron needs to be cleaned in a specific way.

Do not soak in water, put in dishwasher, or use soap.
A hot water rinse using a stiff brush to clean off residue will keep seasoning intact. If necessary, use a small plastic scraper first.
Dry completely. I always air-dry, but my daughter puts her cast iron on the stove over a low flame, briefly, to evaporate water.
If necessary, wipe with a thin coat of oil and buff with paper towel.

hot water and scrub brush

use plastic scraper if necessary

Use your cast iron often. For everything! Consider it an heirloom to be passed on and on and on from generation to generation. Embody it with your own family’s cooking lore. Someone else may get a taste of it down the road…

Two classic cast iron skillet recipes:

DUTCH BABY, SWEET – serves 2

Start with ingredients at room temperature.
In a bowl, whisk together 3 large eggs.
Then whisk in ½ C. flour, ½ C. milk, 1 T. sugar, ½ tsp. vanilla, and a pinch of nutmeg and salt.
Melt 2-3 T. butter in 10-12 inch cast iron skillet by placing in oven at 425 F. [220 C]. Watch so butter doesn’t burn! As soon as butter melts, pour in the batter.
Bake for 15-20 minutes until puffy and golden.
Cut into wedges and serve immediately with choice of toppings: maple syrup, confectioner’s sugar, confiture [jam], cinnamon sugar, or fresh berries.
Makes an excellent, light, breakfast pancake.

batter on the left and ready to melt butter on the right

whisk ingredients by hand or in blender

pour into prepared skillet

ready to bake

DUTCH BABY, SAVORY

*dutch baby savoury ingredients in kitchen window with a view*

In a large bowl, whisk together 1 C. + 2 T. flour, ½ tsp. salt, ½ tsp. pepper.
In a separate bowl, combine 8 large eggs and ¾ C. whole milk.
Whisk wet ingredients into dry until just combined.
Stir in 2 T. fresh thyme, 2 T. minced chives [or parsley or tarragon].
Melt 2-3 T. butter in 12-inch cast iron skillet until it smells nutty and brown. Swirl to coat sides and bottom of pan.
Pour in batter. Scatter ¾ C. freshly grated Gruyère or Parmesan cheese over top.
Bake 15-20 minutes at 425 F. [220 C.] until puffy and golden.
Serve with lemon wedges and Siracha sauce. Both add a lot of flavor!
Perfect brunch or hors d’oeuvre dish.

The Grown-Up Table

March 28, 2018April 6, 2023 / wendyulfers / 15 Comments

Long ago, M.F.K. Fisher [1908-1992] wrote about the art of good eating in one of these combinations: “one person dining alone, usually upon a couch or a hillside; two people…dining in a good restaurant; six people…dining in a good home.”

Fisher suggests that six people, together in a private dining room, form the ideal dinner party combination. The reason is simple–it engenders the best conversational exchange with everyone’s participation.

The six should be capable of decent social behaviour: that is, no two of them should be so much in love as to bore the others, nor at the opposite extreme should they be carrying on any sexual or professional feud which could put poison on the plates all must eat from. –mfk fisher

Her other requisite for a memorable party is to make the usual unusual, the ordinary extraordinary. In other words, when inviting people to your home, be playful and sometimes mix up expected rituals or habits.

I still believe…that hidebound habits should occasionally be attacked, not to the point of flight or fright, but enough. –mfk fisher

During our years of living overseas, we have been both frequent dinner party guests and hosts in various countries and cultures. Our own rituals evolved from naive beginnings. But we improved with creativity and practice.

CIMG0400 — sunday pizza night–courtyard oberursel, germany

When we first began inviting guests to dinner, I needed guidance to learn one decent party dish to cook. [Two Non Cooks Saved by the Brazilians] After that I shifted into doing-everything-mode; the guest list, menu planning, shopping, prepping, cooking, creating the ambience, serving and finally…retreating into a Zen moment of clean up.

Gradually, and gratefully, the entertaining routine evolved into a shared partnership. My husband began cooking for dinner parties. He planned menus, shopped for ingredients, selected the wine, did most of the cooking and serving.

Left to my preferred activities, I carefully prepared the table. Sometimes layering antique linens that belonged to my mother and grandmother. Filling tiny vases with small flowers or vines, alternating them with candles down the middle of the table. Scattering glass beads to reflect the candlelight.

After echoes of departing guests drifted away, I stayed up late to put the kitchen in order listening to favorite tunes on high volume. Then, lights off, I sipped a last bit of wine in fading candlelight and remembered the best parts of the evening.

My current mentor of all things culinary is Gabrielle Hamilton, owner and chef of Prune Restaurant in the East Village, New York City. Her memoir, Blood, Bones, and Butter, was a gift to me several years ago by my daughter. Since then, I have gone to Prune every time we find ourselves in NYC. Twice, late at night, I have seen Gabrielle climb the stairs from the basement kitchen and hurry out the door as diners lingered over conversation and dessert. Once, she stopped to briefly say hello and signed a copy of her book.

Screen Shot 2018-03-27 at 18.46.29 — Prune Restaurant, East Village, NYC

I have read Hamilton’s description about the art of a grown-up dinner party. Her words depict not only a vision of a perfect dinner but also some advice for the perfect guest.

Gabrielle’s words from a New York Times series of articles published October 2017 are in bold italics preceded by her initials, GH. They are followed by my own thoughts and experiences.

GH: To me it has always been clear that a dinner party is about what is said, not what is eaten. There would always be wine and salad and bread and stew: chocolate and fruit and nuts and sparkling cold duck. But those were just the props — the conduits for funny and real and meaningful conversation; the set pieces of a lively, engaged, lingering old-school dinner party. The one that I have been chasing ever since…

The art of good conversation and story telling is central to a successful party of any kind. I also believe the best dinner parties are the ones you think about afterward. When guests have departed, before candles are snuffed for the night and you head to bed, there are a few moments spent remembering everything from mishaps [such as our friend Alec’s kitchen clumsiness Taiwan Green-Marble Pesto] or ideas exchanged during a group study of Joseph Campbell’s Power of Myth interviews. Optimally, this is the way a good party night should end–in a quiet, candle lit room reflecting on the spirit of friends present around the table hours earlier.

For guests, “debriefing” is the perfect transition while returning home. Once, my husband and I laughed out loud during a taxi ride in Paris about the enforced departure from our host’s home. We were offered orange juice on a silver tray followed immediately by our coats. Buh-bye now.

GH: …But there were always, also, a couple of guests who knew exactly what to do. Who never arrived too early but allowed you a 10-minute breather just past the hour they were expected. Who never just plopped their paper cone of bodega flowers on the kitchen prep table in the middle of your work but instinctively scanned the cabinets for a vase and arranged the gerbera daisies then and there. They found the trash and put the wrapping in it, leaving your counters clean and your nascent friendship secured for eternity. When less-experienced guests arrived, those perfect friends guided them quickly to the bedroom to stash their coats and bags so they wouldn’t sling them willy-nilly over the backs of the chairs at the dinner table I had spent a week setting.

There is cultural variety in correct “arrival times” to dinner parties. Americans are almost always on time, unless they follow Hamilton’s ten-minute rule. Europeans generally adhere to a 20-30 minute-late ritual. They also thoughtfully send flowers in advance so there isn’t the scurry to trim stems, arrange, and find a vase while other dinner prep is going on. I love this idea. But if you haven’t pre-planned, then be the guest who knows how to put flowers in a container without leaving a mess.

GH: I’ve always been against the insistent, well-meaning cleanup brigade that convenes in the kitchen before anybody has even digested. Those people who are pushing back their chairs and clearing the dessert plates from the table just as you are squeezing the oily tangerine peels into the flames to watch the blue shower of sparks, who are emptying all the ashtrays just as you are dipping your finger in the wine and then running it around the rim of your wineglasses to make tones like those from a monastery in Tibet. When I invite you over, I mean it. I mean: Sit down. I will take care of you. I will buy the food and get the drinks and set the table and do the cooking, and I will clean up after. And when I come to your house, you will do the same. I will get to have the honor of being a guest. To perfectly show up, 10 minutes after the appointed time, with a bottle in hand for you, to bring my outgoing, conversational self, my good mood, my appetite, and to then enjoy all that is offered to me, and to then get my coat at the very end and leave without having lifted a finger. It is just the greatest thing of all time…

This is my pièce de résistance, the centerpiece of all parties. Invited guests should be the King and Queen of Everything. They should not clear plates or stack dishes or put away leftover food or wipe down kitchen counters. They have been invited to be taken care of, to feel special. A guest need only bring an appetite, a good sense of humor, and their best “conversational self”.

informal dinner for 4

thanksgiving table, chez bentley

GH: …The dinner party now depends more than ever on having one frequently, offhandedly, with abandon. If there are only eight seats and you know a few are going to end up with someone who’s got his head down to check his phone every 20 minutes, or who will be drunk on red wine by the salad course, just think of next month. To know that there will always be, for you, month after month, year after year, decade after decade, a well-set table and a roast and a salad and still, always, the wine, is to know that you are always going to find along the way another perfect friend, and then yet another.

About the wine…When living in Taipei, Taiwan we had an experience of marked East/West differences around wine and a meal. Seated in the dining room of our Chinese host’s home, the first bottle of red wine was a 1953 Château Lafite Rothschild which had been “breathing” on a side table before gently poured into each glass. A brief toast, then the tasting which was velvety, delicate and delicious. There was a pasta course generously garnished with white truffles imported from Italy. He proposed another toast. This time he held his wine glass with both hands and looked directly at my husband, who followed his example but held his glass slightly lower to show respect. Then they executed a perfect “ganbei”, the traditional Chinese toast of draining glasses until empty. It was a time-and-place cultural experience, but tragic, too. This vintage Bordeaux wine, which we were privileged to drink once in our lives, was downed like a beer on a hot day.

A dinner party doesn’t require formality. As Hamilton says, throw them often, even with reckless abandon. It’s about getting people together. We love hosting an informal dinner of homemade pizza topped with arugula and served with champagne for Sunday night supper. There could be placemats instead of tablecloths or bare wood with a colorful tapestry down the middle of the table. Candles always. [Kindle Some Candlelight]

TableSet — family style, at the cabin, estes park

GH: …Set the table. Arrange the chairs. Even if you can now afford real flowers, trudge across a field for a morning anyway collecting attractive branches and grasses to arrange down the center of the table — it will put you right. Roast the rabbits and braise the lentils, and clean the leeks and light all the candles. Even now, someone may get a little lit on the red wine and want to do a shot. But that may be just what your dinner party needs…When your kids come downstairs to say good night, give them a glimpse of something unforgettable.

Our children are adults now and the best ones to say what they remember about growing up overseas. I believe they might recall coming home, from their own night out, to a dining room full of adults known to them, backlit with candles, open bottles of wine, empty dessert plates and drained coffee cups and, always, the lingering aura of good friendship around a table.

I can’t say whether this memory is unforgettable to them. But it is indelible in my mind as the communion of wonderful people around a grown-up table.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Excerpts from “The Grown-Ups’ Table” NYT, Oct 26, 2107 [The Art of the Dinner Party] –Gabrielle Hamilton, owner Prune Restaurant

DSCF1731 — the best dining room view in Paris

Garlic and Girlfriends

February 17, 2018February 21, 2026 / wendyulfers / 14 Comments

How can I cook dinner tonight–we’re out of garlic! –Aunt Josephine, from the Gilroy Garlic Cookbook

It’s not an exaggeration to say that an absence of garlic in the house could be, as far as dinner goes, a showstopper. Garlic simply makes things taste better. As Aunt Josephine makes the case, without it why bother?

There is more lore about garlic than any other food. As one of the oldest cultivated plants, it was thought to be a cure-all, to have mystical powers, and even to protect from evil spirits. It was used in Egyptian burials and placed on windowsills when babies were born.

Garlic is a member of the lily order of plants and the onion family that includes chives, shallots, scallions and leeks. But the most important thing about garlic is the magic it performs when blended into other foods, creating delicious, taste-enhancing flavors.

I love garlic like I love my friends. Friends, carefully cultivated with time and circumstance, blended into my life, simply enhance everything. Friends going back to childhood at home in the U.S. and friends made while living all over the world.

Our early years in Taiwan, in the 1990s, were the beginning of a ritual of rotating Friday afternoons among a group of women I grew to know and love. We took turns gathering in each other’s living rooms. Through the revolving door of overseas life, those Friday afternoons of “wine and unwinding” were highly anticipated.

sampling of TGIF friends, Taiwan, late 1990s

Food served invariably included a healthy dose of garlic. In certain seasons in Taiwan you could find big heads of garlic that were perfect for roasting whole. We squeezed warm, nutty, oil-soaked roasted cloves onto fresh bread or directly into our mouths. Open bottles of wine stood at attention, ready to replenish glasses.

We let our hair down and put our feet up. The formula within the formula was that all ideas, problems, or dreams were fair topics. Laughter kept everything in check. We appreciated each other’s insights, intelligence and strengths. We learned to love the idiosyncrasies. And couldn’t wait to return to garlic and friendship a week later.

What garlic is to food, insanity is to art. –Augustus St. Gaudens

10,000 years ago garlic was first discovered. It has evolved since then, having survived winters in the caves of our ancestors. Garlic is a natural antibiotic, fights bacteria and viruses, thins the blood, detoxifies the liver, decreases inflammation and lowers bad cholesterol. It is also low in calories–one or two per clove.

There are five elements: earth, air, water, fire and garlic…without garlic I simply would not care to live. –Louis Diat

my garlic tin

filled with rose garlic

Store garlic in a cool, dry place with ventilation. Not above or next to the stove, sink, or in a window with sun exposure. Never in the refrigerator! Strands of garlic can be braided attractively into plaits, ready to pull off a head as needed.

braided garlic lasts a long time

and looks beautiful too

There is no such thing as a little garlic. –Arthur Baer

To eliminate garlic on the breath: chew fresh parsley or, my favorite, allow a piece of good, dark chocolate to melt slowly on your tongue and slide down your throat.

The best way to rid garlic odor on the hands is to wash with soap and water then rub fingers and hands back and forth on the chrome of the kitchen faucet. This works!

Avoid at all costs that vile spew you see rotting in oil in screw top jars. Too lazy to peel fresh? You don’t deserve to eat garlic! –Anthony Bourdain

For easy peeling of cloves, separate them from the head. Smash each individually with the broad blade of a chef’s knife. Slip skin off. Or, from Dietitian Daughter, place cloves in a plastic container with lid and shake like crazy. The skin will loosen and separate, ready to be easily peeled away. For either method it helps to first cut off the stem ends.

One little known use for garlic was as glue in the middle ages. It was used to affix gold and silver leaf to furniture, mend glass and porcelain. This seems like a natural idea when literally everything sticks to garlicky fingers after peeling and chopping.

Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese. Garlic makes it good. –Alice May Brock

As good as the garlic was in Taiwan, it is even better in France. I’m partial to the big bulbs of rose garlic on my market street. [My Market Street] It has a pink purplish tinge to the skin unlike white garlic. Once peeled, all cloves look the same. Rose garlic cloves are uniform in size and have a less pungent smell and taste.

Remove garlic root or not?

I remove it unless garlic is very young

We went to a party in Paris one Christmas season. The dining table was laden with an impressive array of food, but I made a beeline toward a casserole of hot artichoke dip. It was perfuming the room with a warm, garlicky aroma that I could not resist. After the first taste, I spooned it directly into my mouth foregoing bread or crackers. I learned that a lot of garlic was the secret.

That recipe for garlic artichoke dip played center stage at the French version of “wine and unwind”, chez moi in Paris. Not all of the women knew each other well, but conversation and laughter flowed as effortlessly as it does among long time friends. Garlic seemed to be the tie that binds. And, well…a few bottles of memorable white and red Bordeaux [Les Hauts de Smith Blanc et Rouge] from my husband’s wine closet worked a bit of magic, too.

It is not really an exaggeration to say that peace and happiness begin, geographically, where garlic is used in cooking. –Marcel Boulestin

I don’t cook everyday now, but I always have a bulb or two of garlic in the kitchen. I’m afraid of being caught in a pinch, like Aunt Josephine, unable to put a meal together because the garlic tin is empty. And, if some girlfriends are getting together, I’m ready with my go-to ingredient to enliven the party…and create a memory of food and friendship.

ROASTED HEADS OF GARLIC

Cut ¼ to ½ inch off the top of head of garlic.
Cut off just enough so all clove ends are exposed.
Drizzle with olive oil. Salt and pepper as desired.
Rub oil in with finger or use a brush to evenly coat.
If roasting 1 or 2 heads, wrap each in foil and seal.
If roasting many heads, place them in baking pan with cut sides up. Cover the whole pan with foil.
Roast 45 minutes at 400 F. [205 C.]
Cool a bit.

Squeeze roasted cloves out of skins onto fresh bread, crackers or mix into potatoes or any pasta dish. Or place in oil and refrigerate to use later.

GARLICKY ARTICHOKE DIP

2-15 oz. [400gm] cans artichoke hearts in water. Drain water. Chop.
1 whole fresh jalapeno pepper, seeded & minced.
3 large or 6 small green onions, sliced in thin rounds & chopped.
6 large cloves garlic, chopped, then smashed in mortar and pestle.
1 C. [250gm] grated mozzarella cheese
½ to ¾ C. freshly grated Parmesan cheese
2-3 drops Tabasco, Siracha or chili sauce, or more
Salt and pepper
½ C. [or less] good quality mayonnaise. Not Hellman’s. [just enough to bind ingredients]
Sprinkle of cayenne pepper over top

Mix ingredients in a bowl & then place in casserole dish. Bake 350 F. [175 C.] for 30-40 minutes until bubbly and brown. Serve with bread, crackers, or vegetable crudités.

dip ready to bake

ready to serve

SPAGHETTI JOSEPHINE from Gilroy Garlic Cookbook

This dish was prepared regularly for the family when we lived in Taiwan. You can add in other ingredients as desired. But I like it best Josephine’s way. Serve with a big salad.

1 medium head cauliflower, separated into tiny flowerets.
1 lb. [500 gm] spaghetti
6 cloves garlic, minced
2 T. olive oil
¼ C. minced parsley [cut with scissors in tall glass]
½ C. butter
½ C. or more freshly grated Parmesan
Freshly ground pepper

Cook cauliflower in boiling salted water until almost tender [~5 min.]
Cook spaghetti al dente.
Sauté garlic in olive oil ~1 min, then add butter and parsley.
Cook on very low heat until hot and bubbly.
Add garlic butter to spaghetti and cauliflower.
Toss together. Add Parmesan and toss again.
Serve immediately with additional grated cheese and the pepper grinder.

Janmarie with mortar & pestle & garlic, Cyprus circa 1992

Scottish Highland Liquid Sunshine

January 22, 2018March 13, 2026 / wendyulfers / 9 Comments

The last time I turned down a whisky, I didn’t understand the question. –Anonymous

I always take whisky as a night preventative of toothache. I have never had a toothache. What is more, I never intend to have one. –Mark Twain

Whisky is liquid sunshine. –George Bernard Shaw

I love so many things about Scotland–except perhaps the food culture that takes mashed up sheep innards, encases them in stomach lining and disguises the whole mess by calling it “haggis”. Scottish comfort food for some, an acquired taste for others, or neither option for me. On the other hand, a morning bowl of hot porridge with butter and honey stirred in, topped with fruit and a wee drizzle of whisky–well, I took to that right away.*

Our New Year’s holiday was spent in the countryside of the central Scottish Highlands, south of Inverness. We stayed in a stone cottage on the grounds of a 17^th century farm in Cairngorms National Park. It was nicely decorated, outfitted with a wood-burning stove that kept the living room toasty warm. Otherwise, we wore layers.

The Bothy, our cottage

the source of heat

Killiehuntly office and storage buildings

This excursion was inspired by the Outlander series of books by Diana Gabaldon. Each is a captivating tome of historical fiction set in 1700s Scotland, England, France, and the young U.S. colonies. There is also some time travel. A few characters have the ability to pass through a cleft in a ringed cairn of upright stones and fall into a different century. Somehow Gabaldon makes it all work. She weaves an engrossing tale with strong male and female protagonists who pull you right along.

The other reason we headed from Paris into the winter Highland hills is that I enjoy single malt whisky. My husband does not, but he does enjoy driving on the opposite side of the road. Match, game, win-win!

IMG_8788 (deleted 19bbe3162da57548f62d302a4bd5869a) — driving north from Edinburgh–not a black and white photo!

I don’t just like to taste or sip whisky. I need to understand it. “Distilled” into bullet points, this is what I know about the drink of my ancestors.

Single malt Scotch whisky is distilled and matured in Scotland from 100% malted barley and water. No other grains are added. It is the product of only one distillery.
It must be kept in a wood barrel for a minimum of three years in its’ country of origin. [Otherwise it is considered a “spirit”.]
It is at least 40% alcohol by volume.
The difference between Scotch whisky and Irish whiskey is in the spelling and the process of how the malt is dried. Hence, flavor differences.
Peat is partially carbonized plant matter [largely heather and mosses] decomposed over centuries. It is cut directly from the bogs and marshes where it forms. Its characteristics differ from geography to geography.
If there is a ready supply of peat for drying the barley during malting and firing the stills, the whisky will have a smoky flavor.
Location of a distillery is dependent only on a supply of good, clean, fresh water.
Water is of critical importance in the production of whisky. It is used for soaking the barley, making the mash, condensing, and diluting the spirit.
Water must be COLD, unpolluted, and as constantly flowing as possible.
Water picks up the influence of the peat over which it flows.
Every distillery is on the bank of a river or by a mountain stream or spring.
Water guarantees both the quantity and the quality of the end product.

It is crucial that a river runs through it…

Water is also important when enjoying whisky as a beverage. You can drink it straight, unmixed, and un-chilled. Or, water can be added to bring out subtle nuances of flavor.

Ernest Hemingway contributed to the misconception about water when he proclaimed, “Real men drink whisky straight.” An unnamed source “straightens out” Hemingway’s assertion. “There are two things everyone should know about Hemingway. First, the whisky he drank had already been diluted by the distillers before he got it; secondly, that man was an awful fool.”

If water is added to whisky, it should be “as soft and pure as you can find”–ideally, natural spring water or filtered water. Distilled water is less desirable because you lose the minerals occurring in natural water.**

Water taken in moderation cannot hurt anybody. –Mark Twain

When in Scotland never request “a Scotch” from the bartender. Total tourist talk. Ask for “malt whisky” or request by distillery name to guarantee being served native spirit.

Words for whisky measures vary in Scottish jargon. Dram is now in common use, but there is also a nip, a toot, a tot, or a wee goldie. All equate roughly to a single measure or one shot, 25-35 ml. A double shot is 50-70 ml. Asking for “a glass” of whisky means a double pour.

three glasses holding the same amount of whisky, a two dram pour

Measurement size is ultimately determined by the generosity of the pourer. In most Scottish bars, one dram is usual, but not always…a bartender in Edinburgh overflowed the measuring cup directly into my glass upon hearing the sorry tale of my cell phone’s demise when it smashed to smithereens on rain slicked cobblestones just moments before.

after the rain in edinburgh

edinburgh skyline with christmas fair and market

the royal mile, edinburgh, scotland

With designated driver behind the wheel, I sampled whisky from two distilleries, Tomatin [Speyside] and Dalwhinnie [Highland], because they happened to be close to our farm cottage and the winter roads were icy.

Dalwhinnie Distillery was particularly popular on New Year’s Eve as it was open all day. Their sampler of six whiskies was served with six chocolate palate cleansers on the side. I wanted to buy a bottle that was not exported or distributed in stores. Dalwhinnie Distillery Limited Edition is sold only on site–6000 bottles produced, 900 were left.

Dalwhinnie Distillery–six whiskies, six chocolates, and a pitcher of water too

A serendipitous coup occurred in the town of Aviemore. I walked into a retail shop and asked the man behind the counter where to find a liquor store. He scratched his head and said, “What? You must be American. No one says that here. We call them booze stores.”

Ben Harris is the proprietor of Cairngorms Creations, a shop of colorful knickknacks. I told him I was interested in whisky found only in Scotland to take home with me. He said, “Do you know the black whisky, Beinn Dubh? It’s made just a few miles down the road.” I had never heard of black whisky. Speyside Distillery which produces it is not open to the public.

Ben Harris of Aviemore

Speyside Distillery–known as the prettiest in Scotland

December 31, late afternoon. We followed Ben’s hand drawn, not very accurate map, got lost, backtracked, and finally found a store with the right address but selling home furnishings. The glass doors were locked–early closure for the New Year’s Eve holiday. Seeing people still inside I knocked loudly, pressed my map to the glass and shouted, “We were sent here to buy black whisky!”

They let us in. The man behind that counter was drinking a glass of Beinn Dubh before he went home. He offered me a taste. The dark-as-night color is specific to its maturation in Portuguese ruby port casks. [I later learned that added coloring helps too.] I bought a bottle for my son and one for myself.

New Year’s Eve night–after three days of sleety rain, icy snow, and bone chilling cold the clouds parted to reveal a full moon.

Killiehuntly Farmhouse and Cottage now has a Danish owner. He and his extended family were using the main farmhouse, up the hill from our cottage, for the holiday. While they ate dinner inside, we sat by a bonfire outside, drinking champagne under fog-rimmed moonlight and tossing large logs into the pit to keep warm. It was exactly where we wanted to be.

New Years’ eve–bonfire, champagne, full moon

The owner came outside wearing a tuxedo and, after chatting for several minutes [ascertaining our American politics–yes indeed!], invited us in to see the restored 400 year-old farmhouse, meet his family, and share a dram of…black whisky. The very same we had chanced upon that afternoon.

In the living room a fire burned brightly. The Christmas tree was adorned in Scandinavian straw ornaments. Conversation flowed easily between Danish and American cultures and across three generations from children to grandparents.

The whisky was very smooth, very black, and served neat. My husband politely, tentatively, sipped his first-dram-ever. He looked up from his glass to me across the room…and smiled.

It was a “verra” good holiday.

* Whisky in the morning oatmeal was not on the menu during our Scotland trip. The idea came from Gabaldon’s books. She describes steaming bowls of porridge served with butter and honey melting in. If whisky was available to the Scottish character, Jamie Fraser, he would drizzle it onto his porridge. Now, in the wintertime, I make it that way at home. Sublime! [Note to self: hack this recipe for future story.]

** I’m neither a water purist nor a Hemingway abstainer. I have my own method for the perfect water to whisky ratio. If the ABV is too strong for my taste, I use a glass “whisky straw” to add water a little at a time. Just right.

Dalwhinnie Limited Edition Highland Single Malt purchased on site and Beinn Dubh Black Mountain Single Malt, Speyside Distillery

Showing color variations. No added colouring on the left, caramel colouring on the right and a lot of something in the middle

We drove by these ruins daily in the Highlands. It is Ruthven Barracks built in 1720 by King George II to keep the Scottish Jacobites in order. The barracks played in history until after the Battle of Culloden in 1745 when the Jacobites were finally defeated and Bonnie Prince Charles fled in exile to Italy.

The Hard Boiled Egg

January 19, 2018August 19, 2024 / wendyulfers / 11 Comments

Somewhere in the world there might still be someone who doesn’t know how to boil water. There are a lot more of us fumbling around trying to hard-boil an egg to perfection.

A well-made hard-boiled egg is more than a tasty bite of protein on your toast or in a salad or sandwich. It can be a thing of beauty if cooked correctly.

There are definitely some bad eggs out there. You have seen them. Eggs which, when cut in half, have a grayish-green line around the dry-as-dust yolk. Or whites so rubbery they might bounce.

o-HARD-BOILED-EGG-facebook — avoid gray around yolk

When ready for a good boiled egg, here is one foolproof recipe, made to perfection and ready to be consumed for nutrition and pleasure.

Because, as Woody Allen says at the end of the movie, “Annie Hall”, “We all need the eggs.”

HARD BOILING EGGS

Place eggs shell to shell in an uncovered saucepan as space allows.
Cover with cold water one to two inches above top of eggs.
Adding a splash of vinegar is optional to help prevent shells from cracking during cooking.
Turn heat on high and wait for water to boil.
When water reaches full boil, immediately turn off heat and place a lid over pan.
Set timer for exactly 18 minutes. At higher altitudes you should add time. 22 min. at 8300 ft.
As soon as timer goes off, drain hot water and flush eggs copiously with cold tap water while still in pan.
Transfer eggs to bowl and set in refrigerator to finish cooling.
Once cooled, ready to peel and eat.

perfectly cooked egg

seasoned with S & P

ready for petit dejeuner

Peeling is the often imperfect part of boiled eggs. Some people swear by peeling under running water. Others say it depends on the freshness of eggs whether they peel easily or not. I use the meditative approach and simply take my time, aiming for the smoothest release of shell and membrane from each part of the egg. Sometimes it works.

Love and Layers of Lasagne

December 11, 2017December 7, 2024 / wendyulfers / 11 Comments

There are two kinds of people who make messes in the kitchen–those who cook and those who prepare meals because they have to eat.

Anna, our Latvian/Russian daughter-in-law, is one who cooks. All the women in her family chop, stir, taste, and serve wholesome food. From a young age she learned from her grandmother and mother before beginning to experiment on her own.

The cooking gene skipped around in our family. My grandmother cooked. My daughter cooks. My mother prepared food that fed us. Joy of cooking doesn’t fill me either.

For most of my life, I never made lasagne. To me, béchamel sauce is like wallpaper paste. Bolognese is so heavy with meat and thick with canned tomatoes. Then, all those layers of rubbery pasta–simply too much of everything.

One year, for Christmas Eve dinner, Anna made what she called Latvian Lasagne. It was a recipe she invented. The origins began while she was a student in university in England. It evolved as her life changed and each improvement in the recipe was sparked by an episode of love.

The Beginning:

In 2007 Anna left Riga, Latvia to attend Bournemouth University in the United Kingdom. She bought a used book called Simple Pasta for one pound Sterling. It featured a Bolognese recipe, full of vegetables, which she cooked for herself and friends in their shared living quarters. They poured it as a sauce over pasta or ate as a hearty stand-alone main course. It was nourishing and inexpensive on a budget.

The Next Episode:

For a time, there was a German boyfriend. His mother was a wonderful cook who took pride in her meals. However, once while Anna was visiting, lasagne was served and it was a disaster. The green-colored pasta was undercooked and crunchy, the sauce, dry and tasteless. Three sons complained loudly over the meal. There was drama. German mother, humiliated by criticism, slammed her hand down on the table, picked up a full bottle of wine, and left the room.

Anna thought the recipe could be improved. She began by using her already delicious sauce, layered it with thin, flat sheets of pasta and baked it in the oven.

The Final Episode:

A new relationship bloomed between Anna and our son, Adam. He told her his mother said he should eat something green everyday. So they began adding fresh spinach and basil leaves into the lasagne layers. He suggested that a bit more cheese might enhance it. This became his part of the assembly. Together, they improved the recipe to its final evolution and, soon after, began a new life together. Letting Go In Latvia

It was during that Christmas Eve dinner when Adam and Anna were dating that my taste buds took serious notice. This was lasagne I wanted to eat again. It wasn’t ponderously heavy. It was slightly sweetened with the addition of bacon, lots of vegetables, liquefied and mellowed with milk and red wine reductions. The ingredients blended smoothly and distinctively. Everything worked in this dish. Now I wanted to know how to cook it.

November 2015, in the first days after the terrorist shootings in Paris, cooking this recipe offered me respite from the shock of a devastating event. Planned violence at several popular cafés and the Bataclan concert theatre occurred on a Friday night. Everyone in Paris was tender and raw. Friends from the United States were arriving on vacation. We had planned to take them out for dinner in our neighborhood.

IMG_4927 (1) — one of the restaurants where shootings occurred, as a memorial site

Eating out was the last thing anyone felt like doing. Instead, I shopped in the morning on my eerily quiet and deserted market street. Then spent the afternoon meditatively chopping, sautéing, and stirring a bubbling pot of sauce. I set a formal table, assembled, and baked Anna’s lasagne for our guests. It was focused and calming, cooking food for friends we hadn’t seen for many years.

That evening, six of us sat around the table, warmed by candles, nourishing food, friendship, and conversation. It was the right blend of the right ingredients and the right recipe. I remember everything, even now, entwined as it was in those circumstances of the time.

With our dual-culture family in Paris with us this Christmas, we will chop, stir, and assemble layers of Latvian Lasagne on Christmas Eve. It’s a new family holiday tradition.

Even if you have your own traditional holiday meals, this lasagne recipe is one of the very best cold weather comfort foods for family or guests.

Everything about the result is worth the mess it creates the kitchen.

LATVIAN LASAGNE

flat sheets of pasta, spices, canned tomatoes in juice, white and red sauces, red wine, milk

Ingredients for Bolognese:

2 large carrots, diced
1 large onion, diced
4 large stalks celery, diced
6 large mushrooms, chopped in half, then sliced
6 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 lb. thin slices of bacon, chopped [I use center cut bacon]
1 lb. lean ground beef [5 -10% fat]
1 large can or 2 regular size cans diced tomatoes in juice
2 C. red marinara sauce
2/3 cup red wine
2/3 cup milk
1 T. dried oregano
1 T. dried basil
Fresh ground pepper
Red pepper flakes [optional]

spinach, mushrooms, celery, carrots, onion, garlic, grated cheeses, fresh basil

Ingredients for the Layers:

Red sauce of choice, ~2 C. This is approximate, but use an amount that when mixed with the white sauce covers the casserole to the edges.
White Alfredo or lasagne sauce of choice, ~1 C.
8 oz. Italian blend cheese, grated
8 oz. mozzarella cheese, grated
Baby spinach or torn up leaves of regular spinach
Fresh or dried lasagne noodles, enough for 3 layers in casserole dish Use thin, flat sheets of pasta, rather than the wavy variety.

Making the Bolognese:

Heat 2 T. olive oil in large saucepan over medium heat.
Sauté onion until translucent.
Add carrots and celery. Cook until softened.
Add chopped bacon and cook until it turns pink.
Add ground beef. Cook and stir until it turns brown.
Add red wine, reduce heat and simmer until ½ has evaporated.
Add milk and do the same thing.
Stir in canned tomatoes with juice, marinara sauce, chopped garlic, sliced mushrooms, dried spices and fresh ground pepper.
Keep stirring and mix everything together well.
Turn heat to low for 45 minutes to 1 hour until mixture is very thick.
Take off heat and set aside.

This sauce can be used with any type of pasta.

sauté first ingredients

adding mushrooms and spices later

Assembling the Layers:

Wipe bottom and sides of a deep-sided casserole dish lightly with olive oil.
Place a layer of noodles on the bottom. Break dry noodles to fit evenly in pan.
Spread one layer of sauce over noodles.
Sprinkle a sparse layer of grated cheeses over sauce.
Add a layer of fresh spinach, as much as you wish, and a few mushroom slices if you kept any aside.
Cover with another layer of noodles.
Repeat layers one more time.
Cover all with noodle sheets.
Mix red and white sauces over top and spread to edges of pan.
Cover with remaining cheese, as generously as you desire.
Bake 350 F. for convection oven [385 F. for gas oven] for 60 minutes. If pasta sheets are fresh, 30 minutes cooking time. Keep an eye on it. When top is browning and bubbly, check that noodles are cooked all the way through. Cover top lightly with foil if cheese is too brown before noodles are tender. Remove from oven and let sit 5-10 minutes before cutting into squares and serving.

first layer of noodles, sauce, light cheese, spinach

red and white sauces over top layer and spread to edges

Serve with salad and fresh baguette. Decant a red wine from Burgundy or pour a Chablis if you prefer white. Light candles. Sit around the table for a long, relaxing evening.

Final notes:

Purists will note this is not Italian style lasagne. Anna describes it more as a “pasta cake”. She believes cheese is what makes the whole thing delicious. Adam still does the cheesing at home. She usually thinks he overdoes it, but then says it turns out great.
You can make it non-dairy by eliminating milk, white sauce and cheeses. It then becomes a tasty red-only-pasta-cake.
You could make it vegetarian by eliminating bacon and beef. However, bacon adds something sublime to the sauce.
No added salt. Bacon and cheese are enough.

There is flexibility in personal touches. I usually put red pepper flakes on the table because I never know other’s preference for spiciness. Sometimes I sprinkle them inside the layers.

Other stories about Latvia and Anna’s family: Begin With Russian Dumplings, Shrooming in Latvia, Letting Go In Latvia

French-splaining American Thanksgiving

November 7, 2017November 26, 2024 / wendyulfers / 17 Comments

Before I was reading news digitally, I cut out an article by a humor columnist from a prominent international newspaper. The subject was why Americans eat turkey for Thanksgiving.

In 1952, an earlier version of this article was published under the title “Explaining Thanksgiving to the French”. The back-story, which prompted the reprint I read, was that a woman in Maryland bought an old, yellowed newspaper clipping at a garage sale. She paid $10 for it. Someone-in-the-know, at the Library of Congress, told her it was worth $80,000 as a collector’s item. She framed it as art on the wall of her home.

We were living in Germany when I read the printed article. I didn’t speak French then, but found the story quirky enough to save. I understand French better now, so the literal translation reads even sillier.

For history buffs wishing to be enlightened without forking over $80,000, here is one version of why Americans eat turkey on Thanksgiving:

One of our most important holidays is Thanksgiving Day, known in France as le Jour de Merci Donnant.

Le Jour de Merci Donnant was first started by a group of Pilgrims [Pèlerins] who fled from l’Angleterre to found a colony in the New World [le Nouveau Monde] where they could shoot Indians [les Peaux-Rouges] and eat turkey [dinde] to their heart’s content.

They landed at a place called Plymouth [a famous voiture Américaine] in a wooden sailing ship called the Mayflower [or Fleur de Mai] in 1620. But while the Pèlerins were killing the dindes, the Peaux-Rouges were killing the Pélerins and there were several hard winters ahead for both of them. The only way the Peaux-Rouges helped the Pèlerins was when they taught them to grow corn [maïs]. The reason they did this was because they liked corn with their Pèlerins.

In 1623, after another harsh year, the Pèlerins’ crops were so good that they decided to have a celebration and give thanks because more maïs was raised by the Pèlerins than Pèlerins were killed by Peaux-Rouges…

…And so, on the fourth Thursday in November, American families sit down at a large table brimming with tasty dishes, and for the only time during the year eat better than the French do…¹

Living overseas for 30 years, without extended family around, our Thanksgiving holidays have been celebrated sometimes untraditionally. During Taiwan years, there was an annual pig roast in Maddy and Cabby’s backyard, linen covered tables lit in candlelight, adults drinking wine and trading stories while children ran rampant until late at night.

Another year, we shared Thanksgiving with Chinese friends who delighted in the array of traditional-American-food-in-excess more than we did.

The year we became empty nesters, I said to my husband, “No more beige, brown and white food for Thanksgiving. Let’s check into a hotel and eat what we want.” So we did. Spicy Thai is what I remember because we still lived in Asia.

After moving to Europe, with both children permanently in the U.S., we continued to lay low during this holiday-that-was-never-a-holiday in the country where we were living.

A couple of Novembers ago, we were invited to our friends’ Sally and John’s Paris apartment for Thanksgiving. It was an intimate group of eight, but international with one Spanish husband and one Italian boyfriend mixed among the Americans. We brought champagne, red wine, and something green to offset the neutrals of what would undoubtedly be served. Thanksgiving food, in brown and white, is traditional.

twice baked potatoes

pumpkin and fruit pie

something green [and red] to offset neutrals

But then–I was completely turned upside down by the holiday dinner we had been avoiding for years. At John and Sally’s table there was color, there was taste, there was texture, and there was deliciousness in the one dish I detest the most–dressing.

Everyone in this family is creative. They are artists, film producers, film animators, screenwriters, painters, musicians, and, as it turns out, they are kitchen creative, too.

The dish I now call “John’s Original Holiday Dressing” is superior to the sage-y, soggy, overly bread-y brown mess I have skipped since childhood.

John’s dressing, rich with veggies, full of crunch, a hint of sweetness and tang, was the centerpiece to a remarkable meal in my favorite city [Paris] where Thanksgiving is not celebrated.

Last year, when we were invited again, I asked to learn the secret to the best dressing ever invented to be eaten with roast turkey on Thanksgiving. Like most naturally creative cooks, John uses no recipe. It varies from year to year, ingredients added or subtracted.

For the Benson/Bentley family legacy, as well as our own holiday celebrations, here, thankfully presented, is the most delicious stuffing/dressing recipe you will ever enjoy eating. Second and third helpings-yes! Next day leftovers if there happen to be any-yes!

There is room for your own creativity too. Play with the spice amounts and optional ingredients.

À chacun son goût. To each his own taste. The essence of French-splanation.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

^{1. Story excerpt from International Herald Tribune, November 5, 2005}

JOHN’S ORIGINAL HOLIDAY DRESSING [serves 12]

Ingredients:

1 head celery, chopped
4 onions, chopped
6 large cloves garlic [or more], chopped
2 red bell peppers, chopped
2 yellow bell peppers, chopped
2 green bell peppers, chopped
Button mushrooms, sliced
Fresh bread croutons–explained below
2 apples, chopped
Greek Kalamata or Moroccan olives, pitted and chopped-optional
Tomato confit [or sun dried tomatoes, softened with just enough hot water], chopped–optional
1/2 to 1 lb. good butter, melted–as much as you want
1 bay leaf
2 tsp. thyme
4 tsp. sage, rosemary, oregano and tarragon [approximate]
Turkey, chicken or vegetable broth, 2/3-1 Cup*
Olive oil
Several Tbs to 1/4 cup Maple syrup**

*For turkey broth: boil/simmer neck and chopped gizzard in 2-3 cups water, lightly covered, for an hour. You want 2/3 to 1 cup of liquid to add per casserole dish. Okay to use chicken [or veggie broth] as substitute.

**John’s turkey preparation involves brining it beforehand. He likes using the salty drippings and basting liquid to add to the dressing. He uses maple syrup during basting to caramelize the skin and add sweetness. If you don’t use the drippings with syrup in them, then add syrup, as directed, at the end of preparation.

Preparation:

1. In a large pan, sauté red, yellow and green peppers in olive oil on medium to high heat, until they are slightly browned and softened. Add in onions and finally garlic. Add spices–2 tsp. thyme, 4 tsp. each sage, rosemary and oregano during sauté. [Quantities are suggestions because he doesn’t precisely measure.]

“It needs to smell herby-and good-as it is cooking!”–John Benson

2. In another pan [flat-bottomed] melt a couple tablespoons of butter. Place sliced mushrooms flat in pan without overlapping. Sprinkle tarragon over it all for a light coating. Brown both sides on medium to high heat. Keep adding butter to the pan as mushrooms soak it up. Don’t skimp on butter. Mushrooms should still be firm on the inside.

3. Make croutons by cutting day old baguette into cubes. Sprinkle olive oil and rosemary over them and toss together. Place in oven on low temperature until browned or crispy.

“They should get oiled all around a bit, not soggy of course. Rosemary should be a light sprinkle.”–John Benson

cubed bread before oil/rosemary toss and crisping

4. Mix together all sautéed ingredients in a large bowl while still warm. Add prepared croutons.

5. Add remaining melted butter, at least 1/4 cup or 250 ml [melt more if you need it!]. Divide amounts evenly per casserole dish. Just pour it over and mix in. Use 1/2 bay leaf for each casserole.

6. Stir in broth, a little at a time until everything is mushy and moist, but not soggy.

“Croutons should not crumble into crumbs if smashed. You will probably use 1-2 C. of broth, based on crouton softness.“–John Benson

7. Now add chopped celery, apple, seeded olives, and sundried tomatoes [or tomato confit]. These will add crunch, flavor, and a bit of tang.

8. Smell and taste. Perhaps add more butter or broth and drippings. Can also add sprig of fresh thyme or extra sage.

9. Stir in some maple syrup, a few tablespoons up to 1/4 cup per casserole.

10. Spread all ingredients into ovenproof dishes. Can place some inside turkey as stuffing. Grind black pepper over the top, if you think about it.

11. Bake uncovered 180 C. [350 F.] for about 1 hour. Halfway through, give it a stir to check for softness. If it’s too wet, stir again in 15 minutes to help with evaporation of broth. If still too moist after an hour, turn on broiler for a couple of minutes to brown and crisp the top. Watch carefully so it doesn’t burn!

“Ingredients are already cooked so baking is to evaporate the broth and crisp everything. A good dried out, browned, crispy top is unbeatable. I think it’s the butter.”–John Benson

maybe the secret is in the butter, but it’s really much more than that…

Set a festive holiday dinner table. When seated among family and friends give thanks to everyone and everything for which you are grateful.

Remember to raise a glass to those Peaux-Rouges and Pèlerins who started it all…

Joyeux Jour de Merci Donnant!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Bugling Elk and Sacred Spaces

October 9, 2017September 27, 2025 / wendyulfers / 25 Comments

Every part of the Earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people. The perfumed flowers are our sisters; the deer, the horse, and the great eagle; these are our brothers. We are part of the Earth and it is part of us. –Chief Seattle, native American

It’s autumn now in northern Europe where I returned a week ago. The courtyard Virginia creeper vine is reddening more each day. Heavier bed linens are in place so the window can remain open for good sleeping. Scarves donned for outdoor wear. And rain.

Still, for the moment, I’m thinking about a longer than normal summer season in Colorado. Three months at “Camp Estes”–our hillside home with Front Range views and walk-in access to Rocky Mountain National Park.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — camp estes’ long’s peak view

What made it particularly special were the visitors, different from other summers. A toddler grand-daughter’s first time to roam rocky, hilly landscapes, a reunion of women from my high school graduating class, visual apparitions of campfire spirits after two years of “no-burn” ban, s’mores with dark European chocolate, and a herd of rutting elk who wandered in–and stayed.

These events merged with other things I love; wildflowers in profusion, mountain sunrise and sunsets, thunderstorms and rainbows, low hanging clouds clearing to snow on the high peaks, elk bugling in the change of season.

Returning to the mountains is particularly meaningful to me because of our overseas lifestyle. For twelve summers, during the years we lived in Taipei, Taiwan, I needed to come home and recalibrate. Living and breathing for a few months at a higher altitude under clear blue skies was very different from a big Asian city of concrete, tile, and smoggy air.

The mountains give us our “spiritual geography”, a term coined by Kathleen Norris in her book Dakota: A Spiritual Journey. It is the place we inhabit to find our best selves.

Mythologist Joseph Campbell wrote of the importance of finding individual “sacred space”.

A sacred space is any space that is set apart from the usual context of life. It has no function in the way of earning a living or a reputation…In your sacred space, things are working in terms of your dynamic–and not somebody else’s…You don’t really have a sacred space until you find somewhere to be…where joy comes from inside, not something external that puts joy into you, a place that lets you experience your own will and your own intention and your own wish…

Your sacred space is where you find yourself again and again. –J. Campbell

My sacred spaces begin in physical forms–a cabin in Colorado mountains, a carefully constructed stone campfire ring, and a secretive destination called “Rock on the River” where I hike alone to heal or think.

There is a chameleon-like aspect to living an overseas lifestyle, between home in the U.S. and home elsewhere in the world. In the mountains I live in jeans and soft shirts, moccasins or cowgirl boots. I drink coffee on the front porch in sunshine or on a deck overlooking Long’s Peak and Rocky Mountain National Park. I go to bed after sitting around a campfire and awaken to the smell of smoke on my pillow.

Returning home to Paris, there is a seamless slide into the city version of myself. I adapt to the rhythms around me as I sit in cafés watching people instead of coyotes, hawks, deer and elk.

Returning to the mountains is what makes this work. Feeling small and insignificant amid the backdrop of a huge landscape clears my mind. I love the smell of rapidly changing weather, poking campfires with a stick, and wild animals that roam without fences. I think about the good fortune that lies ahead–sharing this with a generation of grandchildren.

Another way to tell the story is with pictures. To those who dropped in, or to those who stayed awhile, and to those who will return–a look back at the best of this season’s memories…

“mexican hat” flowers germinated from seeds sown over many years without luck. in 2005, a new cabin was built and they popped out of dormancy

leila 15 months, discovers and wobbles on uneven terrain

jet lag means 5:30AM sunrise with coffee on the deck

avocado margaritas at ed’s cantina, story told here: Sipping Avocado Margs in Summer

horse rides at the shaka shaka [Russian for playground]

early morning reading with auntie “yaya”

fire ring supper with leila, deedee and yaya

high school girlfriends reunite in estes park, photo by betty cleffman hager

old west photo sepia — marking time with an “old time” photo

2017 Deb Colorado_092 — september light, RMNP, photo by debbie windus

IMG_4073_09-14-2017 — “shining pine needles”, photo by mary beckey kelly

2017 Deb Colorado_082 — blooming russian sage, photo by debbie windus

fire ring built in 1991 is mostly in the same configuration. when a landscaper called it a “spiritual circle”, I quit messing with it.

s’more ingredients: grahams, marshmellows, European chocolate choices–plain, sea salt or caramel and sea salt. whisky and wine, optional

smush together, enjoy with adult beverage of choice

fall begins the elk rut. 6:30 AM bugling wake ups outside bedroom window

CLICK HERE for 30 second video taken from front porch of Mr. Big re-claiming the harem after three younger males tried a take-over coup

spirit of the flames turns into double horse head

And finally, to our darling grand-daughter Leila; I hope the wide and wild natural world will always be part of your adventure, that you will be nurtured by its rhythms and beauty, and know that nature exists to support all of her creatures. You are now part of the earth and it is part of you.

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The wind will blow freshness into you, and cares will drop away like leaves of Autumn.

–John Muir

Max and the Beanstalks

September 20, 2017June 4, 2025 / wendyulfers / 11 Comments

Our friend, Max, has spent a lot of time with his hands in the dirt. That is, when he wasn’t a student athlete, coach, husband, father, and Athletic Director for two universities in the mid-western United States. Since retiring [as AD] from Kansas State University, Max keeps an active hand as consultant and mentor to athletes, coaches and other athletic directors around the country. He is a man who is wired to pay it forward by giving back to his profession as well as devoting boundless time and energy to his family and friend relationships.

Max also likes to get his hands a little dirty–by tending the soil.

He grew up in Troy, Ohio in a family of three boys. Every spring his parents planted a large “truck garden” outside of town. A truck garden is larger than a backyard or “kitchen” garden. A pick-up truck is often used to haul things back and forth to the plotted site. His parents worked the fertile Ohio soil without motorized equipment, using only hand tools. Each summer they grew the fruit and vegetables their growing family would eat for a year.

From an early age, Max played alongside the garden patch as his parents worked. He learned the rituals of tilling, planting, weeding and harvesting. It became natural–this annual cycle of producing fresh food with your own hands. And feeding people you love from the harvest.

He carried the tradition into adulthood while raising a family and growing his career. Certain veggies are a mainstay. He always plants asparagus, beets, cucumber, green beans, leaf lettuce, onions, potatoes, spinach, tomatoes, and zucchini squash. He sometimes plants bell peppers, hot peppers, garlic, peas, or yellow squash.

We are among the fortunate beneficiaries of the abundance that grows from Max’s hands and heart, in the friendship he shares with us. Visiting his home in Kansas or when he and his wife drive to our cabin in Colorado there is always a gift…fresh and delicious from the garden.

Two summers ago, Max brought something different. Green beans in a jar, packed in seasoned brine. It was a new thing–pickling the extra beans from a bountiful harvest.

Admittedly, at first glance, these beans deserved some skepticism–pale and limp in liquid–I wasn’t sure whether I could even try them. That’s because I grew up in a household that served beans only from cans. At the family dinner table, my learned behavior was to move them as quickly as possible from mouth to paper napkin to garbage can.

Max’s proffered jars were placed in the cupboard and overlooked until later in the summer. I finally took one as a dinner hostess gift to a neighbor on our mountain hillside. She called me a few days later and raved about the pickled beans. She said they were better than any other kind of pickle, especially for hamburgers. Did I have more jars to share?

Our daughter came to visit. She likes almost everything and is creative about ways to present food. I cracked open a jar of pickled beans and added them to a tray of small bites to serve with drinks before dinner. At her suggestion, we placed them in icy martinis to sip on the shaded front porch.

I tried my own hand at pickling beans purchased from the local farmer’s market. It was a little trickier at the higher altitude of the Colorado Rockies, [see notes for high altitude processing at end] but they turned out fine. Now I’m hooked.

This summer I drove back for a lesson from the source–Max’s plot of land in the Manhattan, Kansas Community Garden. We awakened early–Max, Lynn and I, to pick beans before heat, humidity, and biting insects overtook us.

In the afternoon, we pickled our harvest from start to finish, ending the day with wine and unwind time–featuring, you guessed it, pickled beans.

wine and unwind time starring beans, etc.

Our Latvian daughter-in-law comes from Russian heritage that pickles any and all kinds of vegetables. Current nutritional trends suggest that fermented or pickled food should be included daily in healthy diets. Preserving food this way is an easy activity to do at home. Everyone reaps the benefits.

Pickled beans can be eaten as a low calorie snack or as a garnish to any food where pickles are used [as in neighbor Barbara’s hamburgers!]. They can be added to drinks such as Bloody Marys or martinis in lieu of olives. Let the beans stand as green centerpiece to a tray of rainbow colored hors d’oeuvres. They make a unique and perfect homemade gift to a friend, tied with a ribbon and a sprig of herbs.

Max–here’s to you. Keep your hands in good soil and your beans in brine.

MAX’S PICKLED GREEN BEANS–Makes 4 Pints

INGREDIENTS:

pickling salt, spices, vinegar, garlic, fresh dill

2 pounds green beans–washed, trimmed and sorted by size
½-1 tsp cayenne pepper [optional, if you like a bit of spice]
4 heads fresh dill weed or 4 tsp dill seed
4 cloves garlic, peeled
2 ½ C. water
2 ½ C. 5% white vinegar
¼ C. pickling salt
4 tsp pickling spices

METHOD:

Sterilize pint sized canning jars and lids by boiling for a short time in a water bath. Place lids first in bottom of pot to keep jars off the bottom.
Tightly pack same-sized beans, lengthwise, into sterilized jars, leaving ½ inch of headspace. [Stem end goes on top [Max style], unless you trim both ends of beans, which I like to do.]

sorting

packing, stem end up
Make pickling solution by combining the vinegar, water, salt and pickling spices. Bring to a boil.
Pour hot liquid over beans, leaving ½ inch headspace.
Place one clove garlic, fresh dill weed or dill seed on top of beans before sealing lids. [Can also garnish with a strip of red bell pepper or red onion.]

add garlic and fresh dill

or dried spices
Remove air bubbles. Wipe jar rims. Adjust lids securely but not overly tight.
Process in boiling water bath for 5 minutes. Water should cover jars by 1-2 inches.

water bath boil, cover jars by 1-2 inches

Remove from water and set upright on countertop.

canning tongs to remove from preserving bath

Each jar will have a small rounded dome in the center of the lid. After 15 minutes of cooling time, there is an audible “Ping” sound as the dome depresses and the jar becomes sealed.

domed jar in front before “ping”, sealed jar behind–post-ping

Let beans stand at room temperature for at least two weeks to allow flavors to develop. Refrigerate after opening.

VARIATIONS FOR HIGH ALTITUDE WATER BATH PROCESSING

If you are preserving at an altitude higher than 1000 feet above sea level, you need to adjust processing time as indicated in the chart below.

Altitude in Feet Processing Time [Increased by Minutes]

1001-3000 +5 minutes
3001-6000 +10 minutes
6001-8000 +15 minutes
8001-10,000 +20 minutes

After removing from water bath, leave undisturbed on countertop for 12-24 hours. Then check jar lids for sealing. They should not flex up and down when the center is pressed. If the lid does not seal in 24 hours, product can be immediately reprocessed or refrigerated.

max with his children, mark, courtney, michael

Sunshine on the Back of Your Knees

July 2, 2017April 6, 2023 / wendyulfers / 7 Comments

photo by patricia green-sotos in ubud, bali

It’s summer.

For some, this might involve a long trip across many time zones. Perhaps even to geography halfway around the world.

Yellow Flower Cafe at sunset, Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

Because of our overseas lifestyle, I have been flying internationally at least twice a year for the past 30 years. In the beginning, I ignored the concept of jet lag and simply acclimated with a lot of sleeping. It is easy for me to fall asleep on planes. When the engines rev up and white noise begins, I close the window shade and REM sleep takes over. After reaching destination, I sleep some more. Eventually, day and night realign.

ganesh in bali

buddha’s feet in bali

ubud, bali

Numerous tips have been written about preventing or overcoming jet lag. Some are helpful.

Suggestions such as a good night’s sleep before a long flight, over-hydrating by consuming more water than you want, and refraining from too much alcohol or caffeine. Other tips include not flying with a hangover [major hydration no-no] and immediately adopting the day/night schedule of your destination geography.

These days jet engines don’t automatically make me pass out, so I think about waking/sleeping hours on a plane differently. I diligently perform ankle circles and spinal twists in my seat. I get up to walk or stand. I drink many glasses of water. I take brief naps rather than sleep for hours at a time. All are decent behaviors for trying to align my body clock. But they never accomplish the whole thing.

Recently, I made a long flight from Paris to Singapore and Bali and back to Europe two weeks later. Sixteen hours of flight time each way with six hours of time difference.

My friend, Patricia, who travelled with me to a yoga retreat in Bali had two jet lag ideas that were completely new. The first came from a limited study done in 1998. It was quirky enough I wanted to believe its conclusion–exposing the back of your knees to light, particularly sunlight, in the first days after travel, alleviates jet lag.

An instant antidote! And perfectly timed as we had two recovery days in a hotel in Denpasar before the retreat began. Our base of operation was established immediately after breakfast in poolside lounge chairs. When knees overheated [front or back], we obligingly cooled them by sliding into the water. If boredom or cloud cover made it silly to continue this “therapy”, we went exploring.

retreat location, ubud, bali, by patricia green-sotos

The other jet lag treatment she knew of was more medically aligned with the body’s circadian rhythms. It was the result of a hormone study by her physician brother on human cortisol fluctuation.

I emailed him after the trip to ask more about it. Dr. John replied, “Jet lag is hormone dislocation.” Translation: The body’s normal clock gets out of whack when you pass through multiple time zones.

“Your cortisol level surges each day at awakening. It is set to your biological clock and changes only reluctantly–about one hour per day per time zone. Hence the lag.”

At the opposite end of the day, when it’s time to go to bed, the brain produces melatonin and off to sleep we go. Cortisol levels rise again with the sun. The cycle continues.

Big time zone changes mixed with fluctuating biorhythms can play out dramatically in young children. Our son was six-years-old the first time we flew home to the U.S. after moving to Singapore. During an early dinner, we watched his head suddenly sag forward and plop down in the center of his plate. Sound asleep in mashed potatoes.

Dr. John suggests: “The fix [to jet lag] is in replacing the hormone [cortisol] at the right time of day. Hydrocortisone is safe and effective when you take it at 7:00AM local time for just three days. You can’t do it everyday, only with international travel. Combine that with melatonin [3-10mg] to help get you to sleep and you get the benefit both ways. Works like a charm.”

Take 20mg Hydrocortisone for three days only, at 7 AM local time, for international travel.

You need a medical prescription for oral cortisone and it may be challenging to find a physician willing to write one for jet lag, even in such a limited dose. You could try encouraging your physician with what Dr. John says: “Simple replacement dose is not the same as a treatment dose of prednisone which overpowers your own cortisol. It’s safe and effective.”

I have yet to use cortisone therapy for jet lag. Instead, I researched that back-of-the-knees-light-study from the ‘90s. It was debunked, not long afterward, as nonsense. I tried it anyway.

After returning to Paris from Bali, I took 45 minutes each afternoon for a week to lie on the floor inside my dining room window and expose the back of my knees to sunlight. Instead of a jet lag daytime nap, I found that sunny-knee-time seemed to warm up my brain and nourish it, too. I was more alert, avoided the nap, and slept through the night.

Fact or fiction, back-of-the-knee sun exposure worked for me.

Regardless of suggestions for recalibrating your body clock, you can just live out jet lag and do nothing. Eventually, day and night cycles return to “normal” wherever you are.

Based on our son’s experience, it’s best to avoid falling asleep at the dinner table after traveling across oceans. Or, at least try to finish your meal so as not to drown in a pool of gravy.

Treize–A Baker’s Dozen, Paris

May 24, 2017April 6, 2023 / wendyulfers / 18 Comments

There is a story behind the phrase “13–a baker’s dozen”. In the days when bread was sold by weight, bakers regularly gave customers an extra +1, or 13 items, on every dozen sold. There were strict penalties if found guilty of shorting the customer. Since loaves easily varied in size and weight, they made a practice of “giving more”. Today, generous bakeries might offer a “freebie” as a courtesy for buying a dozen.

Laurel Sanderson was a baker long before she decided to open a restaurant in the back of a Paris courtyard. She comes from a line of southern home cooks and bakers going back to her mother and grandmother in upper Charleston, South Carolina, USA.

At twenty years old, Laurel took off to learn French–in France. She immediately found other English-speaking friends doing the same thing. The combined excitement of new friendships and travel initially slowed the process of acquiring a second language.

After four years of polishing her French and having fun, she moved to Paris and began working in a bar off rue Mouffetard in the Latin Quarter. There, a group of same-age ex-pats from all over the world bonded in friendship. Most of them stayed on. They gravitated from those beginning days of tending bar to the grown up world of food and beverage distribution, management, organizational planning, and in Laurel’s case–a bakery.

Fast-forward another fifteen years–after starting a family and ending her bakery business partnership, Laurel discovered a former auto garage, at the far end of a centuries old cobblestoned courtyard, in the middle of Paris. She envisioned a new enterprise, all her own, and named it Treize…a baker’s dozen.

For the first two years, after opening in January 2014, Laurel managed with irregular part time help that came and went. Finally, in February 2016, she asked a friend from those early bartending days to join her full time.

Kaysa von Sydow is Swedish. For many years, she owned a special events business with food and beverages. Now she runs the front-of-the-house at Treize, which highlights her engaging people skills along with creative coffee, tea, juices, and drinks. She brings the best of Swedish café culture [Fika]–savouring the moment, slowing down, making time every day for a break with coffee, tea, a baked good and [perhaps] some friendly gossip. She also sources the best products for variety and bio-freshness.

Laurel now focuses on lighting up the kitchen space, as well as the whole restaurant, with whatever she is doing: cooking, baking or treating customers as life-long friends.

dans la cuisine à treize

kaysa’s detox special

Why did a southern girl from South Carolina open a miniscule resto in a space that evolved from a storage workshop for antiques, to a jeweler’s workshop, to a hair salon, to a mechanic’s garage? When asked how she made the switch from full time baking to chef she replies, “It was actually pretty easy. People want pastry, but people need food.”

carrot cake in process

always biscuits all the time

There’s more to it than that, of course. She missed the tastes and recipes from her southern American roots. She wasn’t planning to return to Charleston because “home” was now Paris, with a husband and children. So she created her own style of southern comfort cooking and opened it to the public.

When you push open the many-paned glass door at Treize, it’s like walking into a favorite friend’s quirky kitchen and dining room combined. It’s highly organized with floor to ceiling storage, but overflowing with jars and baskets and tins and spices, hanging cast iron and copper pots, piles of fruits, vegetables and herbs. Even the windowpane grills hold ripening avocadoes. There are flea market finds decorating out-of-reach shelves; vintage muffin tins, dough cutters, cake pans, antique copper or enamel cafetières. There is a gargoyle. And cookbooks tucked in everywhere.

a place for everything and everything in some place

carrot cake under glass, a basket of biscuits, ginger root, & a gargoyle!

On the largest wooden table, there is a seasonal flower arrangement next to a stacked pile of “Garden and Gun” magazines. [Laurel’s favorite periodical, from Charleston, y’all.] In the corner by the door, birch tree trunks support curling dried vines that snake upward toward the skylight. Vines decorated seasonally, of course. An antique glass chandelier hangs from the pressed tin ceiling. On one wall is a black and white mural of a little girl swinging meditatively into the air. Opposite, a chalkboard sign reads “In Buttermilk Biscuits We Trust” along with the recipe for this daily served bread.

winter vines in twinkly lights, snowflakes, & pages from a french novel

It’s an eclectic use of very small space. Vintage, antique-y, industrial-ish, chic/messy/favorite auntie décor are all terms that describe Treize. Your senses respond instinctively to the all-embracing ambience. Capturing any empty stool or chair, you melt into the friendliness AND the delicious food smells. It is the sanctuary you were dreaming to find–an escape in an accelerated world.

telephone in the bathroom

to check in with your imaginary friend

The kitchen is an incredibly small working space, but open to everything. As soon as anyone enters, Laurel and/or Kaysa look up with huge smiles and say, “Heeeeyyyyy, how are you? Come on in!” If they know your name, you are greeted with bisous [xx] too. By now, they know practically everyone who walks in, from around the globe.

The recipes change by the day and the season. Menus are based on traditional family recipes that Laurel grew up eating. Some are inspired from The Southern Cookbook. All have been updated and improved with Laurel’s creativity and by sourcing 100% bio ingredients. Top-notch staples of butter, flour, cream, sugar, seasonal fruits and veggies are easily found in Paris. They make everything taste better.

Everyday, Laurel bakes light-as-a-feather, melt-in-your-mouth buttermilk biscuits. [More than 40,000 since Treize opened!] Everyday, there is a three-tiered butter-cream-frosted carrot cake under glass. Laurel’s carrot cake is inspired. It is her own particular version. People come in just because they have heard about it. They return because they are hooked by everything else about Treize, too.

carrot cake extraordinaire

Laurel generally arrives first, very early in the morning. This is her quiet time to bake–biscuits, cakes [one or two in addition to carrot cake], and small pastries for savory tarts. Kaysa arrives next, soon followed by the current prep-cooks, Sam and Anne. Alam arrives last, but stays well past closing to finish cleaning and setting up for the next day. He moves quietly and knowingly in the back of the kitchen. By late afternoon, he nudges Laurel out to sit down for a moment.

After hours of multi-tasking: chatting up customers, overseeing and doing preps, sorting out Kaysa’s orders over the din of customers, unceasing chopping, cooking, baking– finally, it’s late afternoon and a special time to be at Treize. A bottle of wine is often opened and glasses poured. There may be time for more in-depth conversation while sitting on high stools around a tall table peeling oranges and lemons for the next day’s juices. It’s my favorite time to be there. I join in and the prep work goes faster.

I’ve spent many hours at Treize since stumbling into this hidden gem of a courtyard three years ago. I have taken friends or out-of-town guests or my family. I especially love going alone. In this coziest of environments, I find my better self.

There are stories about other people who find Treize, too. A family of five from Luxembourg was visiting Paris. They were looking for food after normal restaurant hours on a frigid wintery day. No place would serve them. They staggered into Treize–cold, tired and famished. Arms readily opened to hold the baby while mom ate her meal. The other children were nourished. Everyone was nurtured. They return every year.

tea blends

tout fait à la maison

A honeymooning couple scanned a fashion blogger’s website where Treize was mentioned and happily lingered over lunch and several rounds of beverages. A weekly table of mothers and babies has been coming in since before the babies were born. “Paris by Mouth” [restaurant review website] rents the large table several times a week to end their tourist walking tours with wine and cheese. A stream of regulars working in the area, bring in their own plates or coffee cups to be filled and taken back to work. A professional chess player, who summers every year in Paris, eats there weekly, if not more. A newcomer, curious about what he saw at the end of an ambient courtyard, walks in and claims his new favourite place in Paris. People find Treize. And they return.

The success of Treize is not hard to understand. But there are subtle, even humble, layers mixed into the daily joy of achievement. For Laurel, Treize is not about her or what she has built. It is about the connectedness created with everyone who walks in the door. It’s a throw back to an environment beautifully crafted twenty years ago in a bar off rue Mouffetard, where customers became friends. Sharing back-stories and experiences, staying in touch with each other’s lives, supporting one another through thick and thin. Both Laurel and Kaysa are masters of weaving friendship into work they love.

The essence of Treize, the thing that lingers, is this–no matter the time of day or the moment in the week or whatever else is going on in the world, when you push open the door, you always feel glad to be exactly there. It’s about broad smiles and sparkling eyes. It’s about lighthearted banter between co-workers doing what they love to do. It’s about warm greetings to everyone, every single time. It’s the kind of place where you want to know their names and their stories. And they want to know yours, too.

There is a feeling of receiving something “more” each time you go. And that’s because the heart of Treize is not simply a baker’s dozen, it’s a baker’s soul…

the smile that lights up a kitchen and a restaurant

Addendum July 2018:

Treize has a re-opened in a new and larger location across from Jardin du Luxembourg. Check their website for menu offerings and hours. No reservations. 5, rue de Médicis, Paris, 75006

http://www.treizebakeryparis.com

Relishing the Radish the French Way

May 14, 2017May 8, 2025 / wendyulfers / 11 Comments

Consider the radish–eaten in a certain way, as a starter course, particularly at lunchtime.

Shortly after moving to Paris we were invited to a long Sunday lunch, family style, in the apartment of my husband’s administrative assistant. Traditional to such gatherings, there was a mixture of ages from toddlers to grandparents around the large dining table. There was a casual centerpiece of low flowers, printed cloth napkins and tablecloth, baskets of chewy baguette slices, small dishes of butter, and, of course, there was wine.

There was a small plate of elongated red radishes with short green stems already at each place setting. Also on the plate was a little pyramid of sea salt. After sitting down, our hostess said, “I will show one way we like to eat radishes in France.”

She picked up a radish in one hand and a butter knife with the other. She smeared good French butter on the surface and, with her fingers, sprinkled sea salt over it all. She bit into the radish down to the stem.

That was the beginning of our first French family lunch.

Recently, a former Paris friend [American] was back in town for a visit and came to lunch “chez moi”. I planned to serve a small casserole of “Latvian Lasagna”. [Love and Layers of Lasagne] I wanted a different starter instead of green salad. Early spring radish season was in full swing so that was the plan.

The best thing about French radishes is there is no harsh “bite” or spicy bitterness to them. They are simply a beautiful mouthful of sweetness, crunch, and moisture. Combined with creamy butter from those Norman-grass-eating cows and salt crystals from the sea, a single red radish is the perfect trilogy of beauty, taste, and satisfaction.

My friend loved the surprisingly subtle combination of butter and radishes. She had forgotten how refreshing they were to eat. And how easy to prepare.

Another way to serve radishes is with homemade guacamole–simply mashed avocado, minced red onion, salt, pepper, and lime juice.

radishes, guacamole and snacks for “wine and unwind” party

Buttered radishes would be an inspired idea to try anywhere else in the world–outside of France. You can’t call something so well known here as “inspired”, unless you are a foreigner. So, wherever you live, tantalize taste buds in an unexpected way, wow guests with a “new” starter, and veer away from always serving the same old salad as a first course.

french radishes in farmer’s market, laguna beach, california

Cocoa Cake With My Curry, Please

May 2, 2017April 6, 2023 / wendyulfers / 10 Comments

It is almost impossible for the average person to prepare authentic Indian curry. With its’ countless spices and detailed combination of ingredients, you need to be born into the culture. Or, you can absorb the know-how as my friend Patricia did, by growing up in India.

Friendships and food, often in exotic locations, are part of the story that has richly colored, and flavored, our life overseas. “Curry Love” began in our family when we moved to Singapore with two young children in 1987. It is also where Patricia and I became friends.

Patricia was born in a colonial bedroom in the remote village of Tilda, in the state of Chattisghar, central India. Two generations before, her grandfather built the hospital there. Infrastructure was limited because it was a tribal area, but the local people had medical care. One generation later, her father returned to India as a Village Extension Worker with a specialty in agriculture. His job was to bring clean water, air, and other forms of conservation [soil, sewage] to rural India. He moved the family to a different village, Bisrampur, with a local population of 500, when Patricia was very young.

From the age of five, the four children in the Whitcomb family were sent to Woodstock, a Christian boarding school in Mussoorie, Uttarakhand, India. Mussoorie-Landour was a former British hill station in the foothills of the Himalayas. Hill stations, during the British Raj, were high altitude towns used for vacations to escape summer’s blistering heat and dust in the plains.

It took three days and three nights on a third class train to reach Mussoorie. One carriage held all the students rounded up in various villages. There were many stops, re-hooking to different trains, and finally taxis up to Woodstock. The school is spread over a steep hillside, 7000 feet in altitude. Students scamper up and down trails from campus into town like mountain goats. The beauty is stunning.

Woodstock School, Mussoorie Landour, established 1854

At eighteen, Patricia moved to the United States. She attended the University of Iowa with a double major in East Asian Languages and Literature [Japanese] and Anthropology/Archeology. Four years later, she earned a bachelor’s degree in Nursing [BSN]. She received an ESL degree [English as a Second Language] in Singapore after moving there with her teaching husband and young family in the mid-1980s. When they returned to the U.S., she worked as a neonatal ICU nurse in Madison, Wisconsin for more than 25 years. In retirement, she teaches and leads retreats in Alignment Yoga with 500-hour teacher’s certification. Oh, and by the way, Patricia speaks fluent Hindi, too.

During school holidays, back in the village, Patricia and her local friends entertained themselves creatively. Collecting dried dung patties for fuel, they cooked rice and curry in primitive outdoor picnics. Later, in university years, her older sister, Cate, began the tradition of family curry night.

Curry-themed parties in Singapore, hosted by Patricia and Bart, brought together a large group of friends. Sometimes we dressed in traditional garb from “Little India”. We also went there to eat curry with our hands, served on fresh, green banana leaves. The pungent aroma of open barrels of fresh spices intermingled with the heady sweet smell of jasmine flowers woven into necklaces is my takeaway memory of Little India.

Patricia, Bart, and friends, curry night, 1988-89

In May 2015, Patricia came to visit me in Paris. She proposed one full day to teach me to cook a curry meal. This was worked in between sight seeing, yoga-posing photo ops, and eating delicious French things.

double tree pose, jardins du palais royal, paris

We purchased fresh produce and spices at the Indian grocery store in the 10^th Arrondissement. Green beans, tomatoes, eggplant, green chili, garlic, ginger root, potatoes, onions, spinach, and okra. This is also the neighborhood with the best Indian restaurants in Paris.

It takes many spices to cook proper curry. We accumulated black mustard seeds, yellow mustard seeds, sambar powder, garam masala, turmeric, coriander and cumin seeds, desiccated coconut, dried curry leaves, cumin powder, fenegreek, red pepper flakes, sea salt and black pepper.

The menu was all vegetable curries, as those are our favorites, with fried pokora, an Indian fritter made with graham flour and veggies and coriander chutney on the side.

I busied myself taking photos of the beautiful array of ingredients and spices in between some chopping prep work. When it was time to begin cooking, Patricia talked me through each step–one by one.

Suddenly overwhelmed, I drifted to the other side of the kitchen with a strong urge to re-arrange the spice cabinet. Admittedly, I abandoned the micro steps of curry prep almost from the beginning. I lost my way with the endless ingredients and order of spices from start to finish. Notes I wrote were a jumble of words without amounts or explanation. I cannot replicate a single dish she prepared.

The truth is, you have to feel it with curry.

curry feast, except pokora which was consumed before reaching the table

At the opposite end of the food spectrum, dessert, I learned a Patricia recipe I have used many times. In the Green family’s Singaporean kitchen there were two things you could count on. One was about food. The other was about tropical living.

On the kitchen countertop there was always a dark cocoa chocolate sheet cake with thick gooey frosting. Everyone was welcome to dig in, anytime. The tropical living side involved a gecko that resided under the refrigerator. He scurried out to eat mosquitoes, ants, and food crumbs, usually under cover of darkness. In the beginning he was tiny, two or three inches in length. Over the years he grew substantially longer–and wider.

One day, Patricia came home and found the chocolate cake tin uncovered. Not a good idea in that climate. On closer inspection, she saw the gecko, now a robust eight-inches, floundering on his back in the frosting. Alive and wiggling wildly, unable to re-right himself, he was going nowhere.

She picked up the cake pan and ran outside. With a spatula, she flipped the gecko onto the grass. Fearing fire ants would attack his sugary skin, she doused him with pitchers of water to rinse away some of the chocolate-y coating. Eventually, he was left to his fate.

Back in the kitchen, she scraped off a bit of frosting, re-smoothed the surface and covered the pan. That evening, her husband asked, “What happened to the cake? The icing is so thin.”

In the end, she had to tell him because, after all, the gecko was part of the family. Somehow that chocoholic lizard found his way back to the five-star-refrigerator-hotel and remained part of the household until they moved.

Of the many things I have learned from Patricia throughout our friendship, I believe this to be the most important. Her upbringing as a third culture kid in India paved the way to a life lesson she exemplifies so well in adulthood. Honed in primitive villages in the dry plains, to boarding school from a tender age amid lush Himalayan hills, to the mid-western United States, to Singapore, and back to the U.S., Patricia learned to lean into life’s changes and persevere through its’ challenges.

She didn’t teach me how to cook curry, but she teaches everyone by example. With compassion, intelligent curiosity, a completely positive outlook, flexibility, and laughter, Patricia leads in the direction of how far we can grow.

friends anywhere in the world, paris, may 2015

COCOA CHOCOLATE CAKE [credit to Cate Whitcomb and P. Green-Sotos]

Butter and flour a 9×13 or 9×9 inch cake pan. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Ingredients and Preparation:

1 ¾ C. flour
2 C. sugar
¾ C. cocoa [best quality cocoa recommended]
1 ½ t. baking soda
1 ½ t. baking powder
1 t. salt
Combine all dry ingredients in a large bowl.
2 eggs
1 C. milk
½ C. vegetable oil
2 t. vanilla extract
Mix the wet ingredients into dry. Beat at medium speed for 2 minutes.
1 C. boiling water
Add this last, stirring just until combined. Do not over-mix.

Bake 30- 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out clean.

Icing:

½ C. softened butter
2 C. powdered sugar
4 T. cocoa
3-4 T. milk [or enough to moisten icing so it spreads easily]
Beat with mixer until light and fluffy. Spread over cooled cake.

Making Perfect Rice

March 24, 2017August 19, 2024 / wendyulfers / 6 Comments

We lived in Asia for a total of fifteen years in two separate cycles. First in Singapore for three years, followed by an interim three years in the Mediterranean, followed by twelve years in Taiwan. Throughout Asia the daily carbohydrate staple is obviously rice.

As a child who grew up in the American Midwest our daily carbohydrate was the potato. When my mother tried to spiff up meals by serving rice, we shunned the bland pile of grain. She resorted to sprinkling sugar over it, which made things worse.

Fast forward to life in Singapore where rice and noodles became a regular part of the family diet. It was presented in many delicious ways as a base to vegetables or meat. Our son and daughter learned the dexterity of handling chopsticks at tender ages.

For me, making rice was always a guessing game–ratios of water to rice, cooking time, lid or no lid, rice cooker or no rice cooker. Finally, it was our Taiwanese helper, Alon, who showed me that preparing perfect rice requires only one thing–an index finger.

The index finger method works for any kind of rice–white, brown, red, black or multi-grain. It works in any size pot. It works over gas, electricity or induction heat. It is the best way to prepare fluffy, un-sticky rice.

PERFECT RICE HACK

Ingredients:

1 cooking pot and lid, any size
rice of choice, optional to rinse first
water

Preparation:

Place any amount of rice into cooking pot.
Add water to cover and stir gently until floating rice grains settle on bottom.
Gently touch the tip of your index finger on the top layer of rice.
Continue adding water until water level reaches the line of the first joint.

place tip of index finger on top of rice

add enough water until it reaches the line of the first joint

Cooking:

Place uncovered pot over high heat. [Sometimes I add a drizzle of olive oil or vegetable bouillon cube for flavor.]
When water begins to boil, adjust heat to continue boiling gently at lower setting.
When there is no water visible and the surface of the rice shows craters, immediately turn heat to lowest setting and cover with a lid.
Set timer for exactly 5 minutes.
Turn off heat when timer buzzes.

olive oil and veggie cube added to rice and water

beginning rapid boil

at full boil, reduce heat to medium

when no boiling water visible, cover with lid, turn heat to lowest setting

time exactly 5 minutes, then turn off heat

No fussy measurements. Just a finger joint level of cooking water. And a timer. Rice is ready immediately or will stay warm under cover until ready to serve.

use fork to fluff up rice in pan

ready to garnish

For small amounts of rice, the cooking is very fast, only a few minutes. For larger amounts with more water to boil away, keep an eye on it until it’s time for the final five minutes.

For heavier rice grains like black, red or multigrain, I measure water to just above the line of my index joint. Somehow it always seems to work.

Because I don’t measure the amount of rice there is always more for another meal. I found a new recipe for leftover rice called Torta di Riso. Cut into squares, it’s a terrific snack, picnic food, or meal on the go. Credit to Sasha Martin from her memoir Life from Scratch.

TORTA DI RISO

6 slices bacon, chopped [can be omitted for vegetarian]
1 T. olive oil, plus more for baking dish
1 chopped onion
3 C. leftover cooked rice, any kind
6 eggs, lightly beaten
½ C. grated parmesan cheese, or more
¼ C. chopped parsley, or more
salt & pepper
Red pepper flakes, optional

Sauté bacon in olive oil until fat begins to render. Add onion. Sauté until it turns light brown. Set aside.
In large bowl, place rice, cheese, eggs, parsley, salt and pepper. Can add chopped up raw spinach for more green.
Stir in slightly cooled onion mixture.
Pour into lightly oiled 8×8 inch casserole.
Bake 400 F. [or 205 C.] for 35 minutes or until golden brown on top.
Cool 15 minutes.
Cut into squares or diamonds.
Serve room temperature or cold.

crunchy on top and with red pepper flakes throughout [optional]

Sex in a Pan

February 12, 2017January 1, 2025 / wendyulfers / 15 Comments

painting by gustave moreau, french symbolist, 1826-1898

Some “firsts” you remember and others you don’t. I can’t remember my first Sex in a Pan.

Many years ago, I was told Sex in a Pan was for women only. Men don’t like it. It is something you never do alone, always with others, preferably in the afternoon.

Hemingway once said, “Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.” I say, never have Sex in a Pan with anyone you don’t like–at least a little bit. Otherwise, why go to all the trouble?

What’s special about Sex in a Pan? It’s not the equipment, which is ordinary. It’s not the getting ready, which is straightforward. It’s not the result, which is pleasurable. It is when everything comes together.

I remember one Sex in a Pan party around my friend Linda’s table when we lived in Taiwan. The other guests were Asian women who had no idea what to expect. But, as with our American Thanksgiving dinners, they wanted to learn and share new customs. So they joined in…and loved it.

Sex in a Pan is like secretly swiping your finger across a thickly frosted cake. It’s what lingers in the memory after taste melts away. But Sex in a Pan is not cake. It is a decadent dessert of many layers–for sharing.

The recipe I have carried around the world is in someone else’s handwriting. That well-worn piece of paper is the key to unlocking where I was and who I was with my first time. It’s lost to memory now.

So, by default, Sex in a Pan is mine to offer anyone who loves smooth and creamy with some crunchy, slightly sour with some salty, chocolate-y, close your eyes, eat-with-a-spoon-kind-of-fun.

At the Taiwan party, inhibitions were safely shed around the table as we talked of taste and texture and guiltless self-indulgence while eating something fun. There was laughter and letting go among friends. And that, in its nutty crust, is what Sex in a Pan is about.

Since we live in France, the ingredient choices are different. Butter from Normandy embedded with crystals of sea salt, Chantilly whipped crème instead of Cool Whip, dark chocolate, shaved into curls, instead of milk chocolate.

We were four women around the table–two Americans, one French and one German. The other three had no forewarning except I needed help to write this story.

It doesn’t really matter who or how many you gather for Sex in a Pan. Once you invite people in, they are mostly curious, ready to dabble in the unconventionally offbeat, perhaps with a touch of “double sens”, [“double entendre”, which is strangely not the expression in France]. The truth about Sex in a Pan is that what’s in the pan is simply a channel for what happens around it.

sex in a pan parisian party, champagne of course

In double-sens-speak, I learned that “sensuously seductive” is said to be “croustillante” in French or “eine heisse Affäre” in German. We romanticized taste by describing the salty [yes to French butter!] and crunchy [those pecans]. Layers of chocolate, sweetened cheese, and fluffy crème mingled. Tiny pellets of chocolate atop hid unexpected softness below. Voilà! Quelle langue!

We sipped Champagne and dipped into the communal dish. Late afternoon gave way to evening where everyone had different liaisons waiting…

When you host a Sex in a Pan party, try to keep the memory alive by having it again…and, then again.

SEX IN A PAN

Ingredients:

1 C. flour
½ C. butter–best quality salted butter you can find
¾ C. chopped pecans
8 oz. cream cheese at room temperature
1 C. icing sugar
1 large pkg. instant chocolate pudding [6 ½ C. size]
1 large pkg. instant vanilla pudding [6 ½ C. size]
3 C. cold milk
1 large container Cool Whip or any good whipped cream
1 large dark chocolate bar

Preparation:

Mix flour, butter and pecans and press into bottom of 8 1/2 x 11 inch [22 x 28 cm] pan. Bake for 20 minutes, 350 degrees F. [180 C.].
Mix cream cheese and powdered sugar and spread on top of cooled crust.
Spread ½ of Cool Whip or whipped cream over cream cheese layer.
Mix together instant chocolate and vanilla pudding with COLD milk and beat by hand with a whisk until it starts to thicken.
Spread over top of whipped cream.
Spread remaining Cool Whip or whipped cream over pudding.
Shave, grate and chop the chocolate bar. Sprinkle all over the top.
Refrigerate until ready to serve.
Serves 12-15 from one pan, depending on appetites.

Serving:

Pass out spoons, one to a person. Place Sex in a Pan in the middle of the table. In the spirit of communal adventure everyone dips in and eats spoonful by spoonful from the pan. Scoop all the way to the bottom with each bite.

So far, I’ve only known one man who said he enjoyed Sex in a Pan. He was able to rise above the gooey communal aspects others have no taste for. However, let it be known that my brother-in-law, Frank, is very partial to anything chocolate.

Begin With Russian Dumplings

January 14, 2017April 6, 2023 / wendyulfers / 15 Comments

We might live in less divisive times if world leaders learned a few lessons from multi-cultural families.

The intersection of New Year’s weekend in Latvia with the Russian side of our family [by marriage] with news of cyber-hacking by Russia’s government in the U.S. presidential election is one example. Cultural and political tensions between nations have always been complicated to resolve. In contrast, relationships in our dual culture family grow stronger with shared experiences, cooperation, and acceptance. People behave better than governments.

The holiday time in Riga made me think about new ways to initiate diplomacy between Russia and the United States. It might begin with, well…making Russian dumplings.

I have been to Latvia twice before with our daughter-in-law’s family. [Shrooming in Latvia, Letting Go In Latvia] What I know about Russian generosity, from the first time and thereafter, is that it begins at the table and flows outward from the heart.

New Year’s Eve, December 31, 2016

This was the evening for a small family gathering. After gifts were exchanged, we sat down at Aunt Olga and Uncle Ivar’s large dining table.

olga and ivar

site of the feast

sergei and tania

There was food covering the entire surface. We generously helped ourselves to dishes of caviar or smoked fish and quail eggs on bread. There was a huge platter of olives, pickled tomatoes, stuffed peppers, salted cucumbers, garlic and mushrooms. There was perch salad, stuffed calamari, meat salad, and layered shrimp salad. There was sturgeon in fish jelly, herring-in-a-coat, and lamprey–a bottom feeding fish that I diplomatically declined.

aubergine salad, crudités, caviar, quail eggs on smoked fish, meat salad, marinated mushrooms [from the forest]

That was the beginning. Later, a second round of eating featured mutton, potatoes, and more of the first courses. The finale was cousin Polina’s homemade cheesecake.

We toasted throughout the meal, which meant raising a shot glass of icy Beluga Vodka and downing it whenever someone spoke. After the first two toasts, I strategically sipped my drink. The other women refrained from vodka and drank juice or wine. I stayed with the cold Beluga, finding it perfect with the food.

At 11:00 PM, when it was midnight in Moscow, we toasted Russian New Year. One hour later we toasted the arrival of 2017 in Latvia. Fireworks lit up the sky. Seven-month-old granddaughter was carried to an upstairs window to see the colorful light show.

anna, leila, babushka [vera]

wendy, adam, leila

New Year’s Day, January 1, 2017

The day for partying with family and friends! Guests and more guests arrived throughout the afternoon. It was an open house that overflowed with adults and children of all ages. There were platters and casseroles of food, shots of vodka [yes, indeed], glasses of cognac [with tonic and lemon], prosecco, champagne, beer and wine.

Russian music concerts played nonstop on the television. Women gossiped around the table or in the living room. Men stood at the kitchen island for manly talk and vodka. I learned that if Beluga is not available, Grey Goose or Finlandia are good choices for icy shots.

manly toasting with vodka on new year’s day

Yuri Gorbacev is the maternal grandfather of Anna, our daughter-in-law. Every year, on January first, he makes fresh dumplings from a family recipe that originated in the Ural Mountains.

Meat stuffing had been prepared the day before. It was a mixture of ground beef and pork, eggs, salt and pepper, onions and cabbage. When it was time to make the dough, two young girls joined Yuri. A new generation was eager to learn, as there is no written recipe.

Basic Dumpling Dough [by observation]:

Start with a glass bowl with water in it. Break three eggs into the water. Stir yolks with a fork until broken. Throw in two unmeasured amounts of salt [like mini handfuls]. Add more water. Pour in flour straight from the bag in several batches. Keep stirring with the same fork, even when dough gets thick and sticky and hard to turn. Arm muscles helpful.

yuri gorbacev

photo by kristians lipse

muscles for stirring dough

photo by kristians lipse

Eventually, dump the lump of dough onto floured counter. Begin kneading.

yuri’s hands, photo courtesy of kristians lipse

The girls were fully engaged under Yuri’s guidance. The rest of us watched. Our hands-on help time was approaching. Kneading completed, the dough was rolled out flat and thin, then cut into small rounds with the open end of a glass. Each round had to be packed full of the meat mixture, pinched tightly closed, bent into a circle and laid on a floured tray.

the art of cutting circles, photo courtesy of kristians lipse

stuff, pinch and…

…turn into dumpling circles

Readied dumplings were placed in boiling water. In a few minutes, they were pulled from the pot and immediately served. Latvian sour cream with or without black pepper was the dipping sauce. Vodka shot optional.

serve hot with sour cream

and vodka! photo by kristians lipse

My son, Adam, and I stood next to each other as part of the dumpling-filling team. Others continued to roll dough, cut circles, fill or boil dumplings. Volunteers rotated by choosing a part to play: production, cleanup, serving, eating, or simply enjoying the party.

photo by kristians lipse

Suddenly, the volume of voices grew very loud. Russian–spoken, shouted and sung overwhelmed the room. The cacophony turned into background “white noise” for Adam and me. We spoke of feeling “invisible” in the middle of a hubbub we couldn’t understand. It was surprisingly peaceful, even meditative. We murmured in our own language, rhythmically filling, pinching, and turning out dumplings.

Adam said it is like this every year. The dumpling ritual gives him a purpose. Then, when he can no longer discriminate words through the tangle of sounds, he slips into his own thoughts. It’s a little quieter there, yet he remains physically present amid the chaos. He can be happy in both places at the same time.

I had my own thoughts, too. Here I was, on New Year’s Day, in a houseful of partying Russians and Latvians who embraced me with ease. No tension. No discord. An international marriage, a dual culture grandchild and, of course, Yuri’s dumplings bound us all together in friendship, joy, and love.

It should always be this way…

Paris to Avignon and Le Train Bleu

December 12, 2016April 17, 2025 / wendyulfers / 5 Comments

train-map — railroad map: paris to avignon

In April 2016, my husband and I headed to Provence for an early spring weekend getaway. We wanted to explore Avignon, the former Papal capital during the Middle Ages. The direct TGV train from Paris’ Gare de Lyon took us there in a little over three hours.

We arrived at the station two hours before departure time and ascended the wide curving staircase to the historic restaurant on the second floor, Le Train Bleu. It overlooks the tracks of incoming and outgoing trains, on one side, and the city of Paris, on the other.

track side view, judith clancy drawing, 1979

street side view, judith clancy drawing, 1979

The first order of business was to relax in comfortable ambience before the train departed. The second was to order petit déjeuner à la M.F.K. Fisher who wrote stories about this restaurant from the 1930s-1960s. I wanted to replicate her experience 50+ years later.

Le Train Bleu is always grand, but mostly empty in the early mornings. A few scattered travelers may show up to drink coffee or tea, but the white tablecloth tables and red leather banquettes are unavailable until lunch. We were seated at an unadorned table near the trackside windows.

the revolving door into another century

We invited friends, Sally and John, to join us even though they were not travelling. They were first timers to Le Train Bleu, and we knew they would enjoy the historical elegance with a light breakfast, too.

Fisher’s typical order was thin slices of Italian Parma ham, good bread and butter and a half bottle of brut Champagne. Parma ham is no longer a choice, but whole grain brown baguettes with butter and jam are still traditional. Cappuccino or café noir was our beverage of choice.

We breakfasted leisurely, ordering a second round of coffees. As our friends left to return to their apartment in Montmartre, we boarded the train going south.

Exiting the station, the train picked up speed passing sooty graffiti-walled cityscape. Then came the banlieue [suburbs] with blocky cement apartment buildings and finally pastoral countryside dotted with farms and grazing animals.

Avignon sits on the banks of the Rhône River in Provence, north of the coastal city of Marseille. When the Catholic Church moved the papacy from Rome to Avignon in the 14th century, it became the center of Christianity. The Palais de Papes [Popes’ Palace] was occupied for the next seven decades by a succession of seven popes.

UNESCO world heritage sites: bridge of avignon and pope’s palace

Avignon was still under papal control until the time of the French revolution in 1789. Afterward, it was used as a barracks and then as a prison for many years. Today it is a UNESCO World Heritage site with a must-see museum–the Palace itself.

The Palais de Papes is the largest Gothic palace ever built. Its’ walls are an impenetrable 17-18 feet thick. Immense proportions are filled with cavernous halls, chapels and chambers.

top of the pope’s palace tower

palace walls 17-18 ft. thick

The “Treasure Room” was where all the gold, silver and jewels owned by the Church were kept. Back then it was off limits to everyone except the Pope. Today the room has a glass floor where you can see massive rectangular stones, propped up, under which the treasures were hidden, back in the day. It is impossible to imagine the wealth once secreted under these stones.

papal tower thru a rampart

three gargoyles

We stayed at La Mirande, an historic hotel in the shadow of the Palace museum. Originally it was a Cardinal’s palace, resurrected into a period hotel centuries later. Our room had a small, walkout walled terrace overlooking rooftops and a church steeple.

As often the case when traveling, one of the best experiences we had was stumbling upon an unknown restaurant when we were rain-soggy, tired, and very hungry.

We were lucky to slip into the last table for two in a tiny, terra cotta tile-floored café called Chez Lulu. On a piece of black slate, we were served a small round of Camembert cheese baked in its’ thin wooden container. Around the cheese box there were rolled up slices of prosciutto, tiny roasted potatoes, small green cornichons, and a lightly dressed mixed salad.

That molten cheese into which we dipped bread, potatoes, prosciutto and pickles is as memorable now as it was at first bite. The cold dampness of all-day showers disappeared. Dim interior lighting radiated warm ambience. Provençal wine complimented the peasant-like simplicity of the meal. We ordered a second glass.

There is subtle enjoyment in the harmony of opposites. Early morning spring sunshine in Paris–chilly, all-afternoon rain in Avignon. Beginning the day under the splendor of Belle Époque frescoes in Le Train Bleu and ending it in an unpretentious brick walled café with fogged over windows dripping rain.

Si vous êtes chanceux, alors ça va parfois dans la vie…

If you are lucky, so it sometimes goes in life…

For the historical and contemporary story of Gare de Lyon and Le Train Bleu, see Gare de Lyon and Le Train Bleu, Paris.

BAKED CAMEMBERT A LA PROVENÇALE

1 small round camembert cheese per person or 1 large round for 2 people
boiled or roasted potatoes, skin on
prosciutto or any charcuterie [optional]
tiny pickles, gherkins or cornichons
raw veggies such as sweet peppers, radishes, cherry tomatoes
baguette or crusty country bread
mixed green salad with homemade vinaigrette

basic ingredients: camembert cheese, cornichons, potatoes, bread, veggies, mixed green salad

remove some rind, insert garlic slices, drizzle with olive oil

sprinkle with rosemary and/or chili peppers, place in an oven proof dish

Preparation:

Remove the paper covering over cheese. Line the inside of the wooden box with aluminum foil to keep cheese from leaking out of box. Place cheese back in box. [Box should be held together with staples, not glue.]
Cut a thin layer off the top rind to expose interior. Insert several slices of fresh garlic, place a few fresh rosemary leaves on top, a sprinkle of sea salt or chili peppers, as desired.
Drizzle a tiny amount of olive oil over. Place on baking sheet or in cast iron skillet then into preheated oven set at 180C or 350F.
Bake no more than 10-15 minutes, until cheese is “melt-y”.
Place box of oozing Camembert on serving plate arranged with prepared potatoes, crudités, pickles, meat, and salad.
Recipe for best vinaigrette here: Babies and Rice So Very Nice or Finally, The Best Salad Dressing Ever
Serve with a basket of good bread.

A light red wine [pinot noir], a crisp white [Chablis], a rosé from Provence or Champagne as accompaniment.

Winning–At What Cost?

November 13, 2016April 6, 2023 / wendyulfers / 24 Comments

American Ambassador’s Residence, Paris, France November 8, 2016

I am not a political pundit or an op-ed writer. I don’t wear my politics or spiritual beliefs on my shirtsleeve. I write stories. Not of war and peace, but about relationships, experiences, or simply a place–often overseas.

Twenty-nine years ago, we chose to leave our home in the U.S. and move to a country in Asia with two very young children. The initial motivation was a job opportunity. But the multi-cultural, international lifestyle suited us. So we remained abroad as expatriates.

From the beginning, we found ourselves experiencing stronger patriotic feelings toward our country by living outside it and looking back in. We talked about this with other Americans also living overseas. We weren’t alone in our pride.

People from other cultures have often told us how much they love and admire the United States. They openly wept and leant support in times of national disaster, 9/11 in particular.

They followed the details of our presidential elections. No matter what country we lived in, we have been asked to give opinions about current U.S. politics. Keen to the international importance of American leadership, people were interested in our “insider” knowledge. Which was, of course, only what we ourselves believed.

The 2016 presidential election has been a turning point to wondering where in the world we belong. Yes, we are a generation older. Our global perspective feels very normal to us now. Yet, we are clearly outsiders looking back to a country we no longer recognize. We see a head-knocking clash of values and compromised national character.

This has been THE most difficult election to discuss or try to explain to non-Americans. During the campaign, my husband and I were often asked by neighbors in our Paris apartment building how Donald Trump could become a candidate for the Republican Party.

We fumbled for words that mostly ended in head-shaking silence. Throughout the whole painful campaign we hung onto the [naïve] hope that preparation and decency and respect for the responsibility of being President of the United States would win in the end.

Because it didn’t work out that way, we have stumbled. We feel stuck in a way that is difficult to shake. Or explain to others in our overseas world.

My personal upset, initially “all over the map”, was honed by something I read a few days ago. A female educator, in Massachusetts, initially thought her sorrow would be about the loss of a qualified woman to lead the U.S., the loss of knowing what could have been.

She went on to say, “…but that’s not where the disappointment is for me. The disappointment is in the values that won and what that means for lots of people.”

In other words, our collective sorrow should be directed toward the dread of a man whose character and values make him a devastating choice of leader both at home and in the world.

And there, in a nutshell, is my sticking point.

Values are goals to strive for, abstract standards to live by. They are the moral fiber that makes us human. Having them defines character. We grow up. We get to choose personal values that play to our individuality, defining the path by which we live.

There is also a history of values that Americans have culturally ascribed to those serving as U.S. President. Intelligence, preparation, responsibility to service and inclusion of all others, integrity on the job–these are a few.

Living in Europe the past eleven years has solidified for us the valued role American leadership has played historically and continues to play globally. In Normandy, United States and French flags are flown side by side. At the American cemetery on Omaha beach, French school children annually adopt an individual gravesite to take care of, remembering and learning about the soldier who lies there.

American Cemetery, Omaha Beach, Normandy

On this windy, northern French coastline the memories of WWII remain strong. People in Normandy beam when they learn you are American. All Europeans remember that in 1948, via the Marshall Plan, the U.S. pledged to rebuild a devastated continent. It was a remarkable historical first–the victor rising to aid the vanquished. These events, including the noble Berlin airlift, occurred because of morally responsible government leadership and values that represented the best of America.

One more story: Today, my husband went to pick up his dry cleaning. The normally reserved French woman at the counter looked directly at him and asked, “How are you doing?’ Then she said, with utter despair, “I have no words!” It was raw emotion.

This election isn’t solely about disenfranchised voters with a myopic view of what they “think” is going to change and “the guy” who can get the job done. It isn’t solely about the inability to break a glass ceiling by a woman capable of doing so.

This election, as all before it, is also about the recognition, reputation and stance of the United States in the world. It has unnerved people internationally that much of our “American-ness”, the compassion and cultural values exercised and upheld for 240+ years have been cast aside by so many. At what cost?

Looking upon my country from afar, it appears that we have tossed a vital piece of national character and conscience out the window. I feel ashamed right now.

It’s difficult to know, or predict, what this “win” will cost our country, our international standing, our global consciousness, and our future.

Gare de Lyon and Le Train Bleu, Paris

October 17, 2016April 17, 2025 / wendyulfers / 18 Comments

Soon after we moved to Paris I sought out this “Place” M.F.K. Fisher wrote eloquently about as being more than just a train depot for entering or exiting the city. She was referring to the Gare de Lyon in the 12th Arrondissement. I wanted to know why it was so special.

inside gare de lyon today

track side view, judith clancy drawing, 1979

Fisher’s experience on French trains began in 1929 when she moved from California to Dijon. She described herself in the early years as “…always one more ant scuttling for a certain track.” Then, in 1937, while waiting for guests to arrive, she sat under the enormous glass roof in a trackside café with marble tables and green trees planted in boxes. With a brandy and water in hand, absorbing her surroundings, she was suddenly overcome by a feeling that she “was not in a station, but in a Place”. From then on, she made it a habit to arrive early–with time to wait.

clock tower outside entrance

under the glass roof

In the 1960s and early ‘70s, after children and husbands and lovers were long gone, she was often sent to Provence on writing assignments. Her publishers encouraged her to fly south from Paris. Memories honed decades earlier meant she preferred the “Mistral” train from Gare de Lyon to Marseille or Aix-en-Provence.

She developed the habit of arriving at least two hours before departure. This allowed time to ascend the wide stone staircase to the second floor restaurant–Le Train Bleu. When you spin through the revolving wood and glass door, then and now, it is like walking into a time capsule from La Belle Époque. Instinctively, you stand a little taller and walk a little more gracefully to your table.

ascending the stone staircase to le train bleu

and from the other side

the revolving door into another century

In 1900, Paris was hosting a second world’s fair. As part of the preparation, a new train station, Gare de Lyon, was designed to highlight the railway lines of the PLM [Paris-Lyon-Marseille] Company from Paris to destinations in Provence and the Côte d’Azur on the Mediterranean. The company also wanted a prestigious and elegant restaurant to symbolize travel, luxury and comfort.

In 1901, Buffet de la Gare de Lyon first opened its doors amid sumptuous art nouveau décor. Ornate carvings, moldings, gilding, and imposing chandeliers highlighted frescoes and murals of cities and scenery viewed from PLM trains as they headed south and east. The restaurant offered tranquility, character, and a place for travelers to spend a refined break. In Fisher’s words, it was “all that was opulently cheerful, generously vulgar and delightful about la Belle Époque.”

In 1963, the restaurant was renamed Le Train Bleu in reference to the French Riviera destinations.

art nouveau details

opulence, decadence and delight to the eye

Fisher’s early arrival gave her the luxury of time for a leisurely breakfast or lunch. In the 1960s, she believed that the fresh bread served in Le Train Bleu was the best she had tasted since before WWII. For petit déjeuner she always had “bread and butter, Parma ham, and a half-bottle of brut champagne…”, which she thought a bit expensive, but enjoyed all the same.

If lunchtime, she started off with a Kir and wine cocktail, followed by some kind of soufflé and fresh berries for dessert. Oh–and a half bottle of white wine–Grand-Cru Chablis. She liked her grown up drinks, having adapted easily to the French way.

Interestingly, Fisher played a role in the longevity and preservation of Le Train Bleu. By the early 1970s, the paintings were filthy with soot and pollution, gold leaf was flaking from the ceiling, the lace curtains hung in tatters and, underfoot, the flooring creaked and sagged. She was told by a group of worried waiters that the restaurant’s survival seemed doomed. She relayed all this to an American friend, Janet Flanner, who was also her neighbor. Flanner, a longtime journalist and Paris correspondent for the New Yorker magazine, went directly to the French Minister of Culture at the time. Le Train Bleu was designated an historic monument in 1972.

Since that time there have been many renovations, the most recent in 2014. Parquet floors were insulated and shored up, paintings re-cleaned, carved moldings refinished or repainted, brass coat and luggage racks polished, and leather banquettes refurbished. The name over the door was updated from neon lights to a chic metal plate.

The antique Big Ben Bar from 1901 is used today as a decoration piece and stands imposingly by the swinging glass doors to the kitchen. The original cash register is there too.

big ben bar today

sits near kitchen doors

drawing by Judith S. Clancy, 1979

There is not one corner or wall, ceiling or chandelier, archway or window in this special Place that doesn’t grab your attention or overwhelm your senses. Every time.

art nouveau details

view toward the city

These days, the menu is priced for upper-crust travellers, tourists, or well-heeled Parisians. But because it is such a Place, truly unlike any other, it’s always worth it.

Recently, I went for lunch by myself. Timed perfectly, I arrived near the end of the service, around 2:00 PM. On this cool, autumn day I decided to try the made-in-house foie gras served with rhubarb chutney and grainy toast, green salad and a glass of Montrachet white wine–from Burgundy.

When I dine alone, the pleasure is subtle and personal. Not everyone feels this way. But, over time, I have fine-tuned the ability to “disappear” in public and enjoy everything around me as if I were invisibly dropped into the scene. It is an example of cultural learning from which I have benefited greatly.

Fisher sometimes spoke of moving like “a ghost” in her travels, seemingly invisible to others, often because she was wrapped up in one of personal trials. I understand what she meant, but in a different way. For me, invisibility is a feeling of being completely content with my own company. And, at the same time, not taking anything, within the experience I am having, for granted. I observe and wonder, discreetly, without being the center of anyone else’s observations.

On this particular day, directly in front of me was an opulent antique buffet with perfectly arranged wine glasses and the PLM [Paris-Lyon-Marseille] logo carved on the top piece. Above that, reaching up to the very high ceiling, was a colorful painting of Marseille.

buffet with PLM logo from 1901

fresco marseille

As the tables to the left and right gradually emptied, I gazed openly through the window to my left onto the tracks and boarding passengers one floor below. I wondered where they were going, how long they would stay. Was it travel for business, pleasure, something mysterious or even sad?

To the right, down a long banquette of tables reset for another meal, sat two diners leaning in towards one another. They were silhouetted against the window overlooking the square at the entrance. Why were they lingering? What was their conversation? When you are invisible, all possibilities are imagined.

Meal over, espresso finished, with no train to catch, I made my way home. Musing on the métro, my thoughts drifted to a weekend getaway my husband and I took from Paris to Avignon several months before–a trip that began in a place, not a station…

That story here: Paris to Avignon

lo90 — Judith S. Clancy drawing, exterior façades, 1979

Shrooming in Latvia

September 11, 2016April 6, 2023 / wendyulfers / 18 Comments

In June 2015, our son Adam married his bride, Anna Jerovejeva, next to a lake in the Latvian countryside. The partying went on for two days and was told in a previous story, Letting Go In Latvia.

The women in our daughter-in-law’s Russian family–mother, aunt, grandmother–invited me to return to Riga, Latvia for mushroom hunting season in September. Foraging the forest for edible fungi is an anticipated annual event.

The lack of language on both sides [no Russian-me; basically no English-them] was slightly daunting. Then I realized it would be crazy to pass up an adventure like this. Think of the advantages. 1. I would forge a new Russian/American alliance. 2. I would participate in an ancient survival skill involving tools and hunting. And 3. I would learn to avoid poisonous fungi that could upset international family relations.

Arriving in Riga, I was hosted to a private tour of the old city and its history. My guide, a young Latvian woman, spoke fluent English. Anna’s mother, Tania, who speaks a little English but not confidently, acted as my personal photographer.

ceiling in the orthodox church

tania and wendy and a monument

touring riga

Like many Eastern European countries, Latvia has a complicated history. In the beginning it was purely Pagan. Then Germanic people arrived bringing Christianity to the old world mix. They set up shops and churches and a new form of civilization. There were influxes of settlements of Poles, Finns, and Russians.

After WWI, from 1918-1940, Latvia had a brief twenty-two year period of complete independence. The Russians returned in 1940. Then the Germans replaced the Russians until WWII ended. In 1945, the Russians ran the Germans out for the last time. The Soviet Period lasted until 1991. Finally, Latvia underwent its second independence with the breakup of the USSR. The post-Soviet years began.

In 1991, a new law stated that in order for citizens of Russian heritage to receive Latvian passports they must learn both the language and history of the country. Many chose not to as they were past school age, raising families or trying to get by working their everyday jobs. Anna’s maternal grandmother, Vera Gorbacova, is one example. She was born on the eastern edge of Latvia near the current border with Russia. She raised two daughters, Tania and Olga, and worked in a factory as an engineer. She never learned to speak Latvian. The family mother tongue is purely Russian.

Mushroom hunters in Latvia are a devoted cult. The day of the hunt has its own rituals. As foragers, the women have favorite forest areas where they return many times each season. Mushrooms are best harvested in cool, rainy weather where fungi grow plentifully in mossy groundcover under trees, rocks, and leaves.

Early fall of 2015 was unseasonably warm and sunny . I didn’t need to dress traditionally in rubber boots or even wear a coat. We left Riga mid-morning and drove 45 minutes outside the city to the secret woods. My guides were Tania, her sister Olga, and their friend Edita, who acted as my translator. That day they needed to do some serious sleuthing to find the coveted treasure.

I was given my own set of tools–a basket holding a knife for harvesting and a purple plum for energy. I was shown how to cut mushrooms close to the ground with the special blade. Off we went, fanning out to cover maximum territory.

The woods were not particularly dense, but if I wandered out of visual range I would hear a plaintive “Wennndeeeeey, where are you?” These women were not about to lose their American relative in the Latvian forest. I tried to stay within their range of comfort.

Olga is particularly gifted in guiding the hunt. She would search an area alone and then call me over to do the actual picking. Or cutting. But I really liked finding some little nest of mushrooms on my own. However, when I showed them off proudly, Olga threw most of them back on the ground because they were too small. Or they were, well…poisonous.

the highly coveted cepe mushroom

a little mushroom family

beauty=danger=POISON!

a prize cepe mushroom

my morning crop

baskets set aside for lunch

One of the great parts of the day was when we returned to the car for lunch. A tailgating party! From the open trunk came a delicious little feast you could hold in one hand. No plates or napkins necessary. Silvery smoked fish covered small squares of sliced black bread. There was a whole hardboiled egg, and a big wedge of red tomato. Lunch looked like a beautiful still life painting–in my hand.

an edible still life-in hand

Two more hours of hunting before returning to the city, changing clothes, and meeting at Tania’s to cook dinner. My translator from that point on was the vivacious Julia, married to the very patient Juris who would not take a drink of alcohol during our time together because he was responsible for safely chauffeuring “precious cargo”–Julia and me. You have to love a man like that!

Tania was cleaning mushrooms when we arrived. Her technique was meticulous. They must be completely peeled–head to stem. [Thus, bigger means less work for the end result.] If the inside of the stem was not perfectly white, when looking at it from the bottom, it meant worms had invaded. These were immediately discarded as unacceptable. After peeling, mushrooms were rinsed and drained in a colander.

tedious peeling

perfectly cleaned, ready to cook

While the cleaning is tedious, the cooking is easy. Slice and chop stems and heads into random sized pieces. Sauté diced onion in olive oil. Add mushrooms and cook on medium-high heat. Keep the water that is released and stir it around to steam them.

Then, drain the water. Add some butter. Add two big spoonfuls of solid cream [like crème fraîche]. Add salt. Serve immediately. I would add a generous grind of fresh pepper or even some red pepper flakes. But this is not the Russian way.

While Tania was preparing our meal of roast duck, fried potatoes, sautéed mushrooms, and sliced tomatoes, Julia was introducing me to the finer points of drinking vodka Russian style. It should be consumed in shots with traditional food pairings.

fish, onion, tomato on black bread, icy cold shot vodka

First the vodka is frozen. Pour into a shot glass. Drink the shot. Immediately eat a tiny piece of black bread covered by oily fish, onion, and tomato. Or, down a shot followed by a pinch of warm fried potatoes and some pickled cabbage. Either way–deliciously satisfying. No side effects.

vodka with bread and fish or

with a pinch of cabbage

A cultural turning point occurred at evening’s end. For dessert we had eaten sweet watermelon chunks with our fingers. This reminded me of a story daughter-in-law Anna had told me from her childhood. So I shared it with the others.

When her parents, Tania and Sergei, would go out on summer evenings leaving her at home, Anna would slip out of the apartment and go to the market with saved coins. She would pick out a big ripe watermelon and lug it home. Managing to cut it in two pieces, she ate one whole half by herself with a spoon down to the white rind. Seeds and all!

As I finished telling the story, everyone glanced down at the dessert plates. On every plate there were two or three watermelon seeds idly dropped. But on my plate there was a mountain of black and white seeds because I had carefully picked them out before eating the sweet fruit. Every single seed.

I quietly covered my plate with a napkin. But it was too late. The women watched and erupted into uproarious, mirthful laughter. So did I.

As it turned out, Glasnost prevails. Around this cross cultural table of Anglo/Russian women we laughed long and hard. And saw each other clearly.

cf041989 — my favourite tania and julia photo, june 2015

Berry Best Summer Sangria

August 23, 2016April 6, 2023 / wendyulfers / 12 Comments

A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing and the lawn mower is broken. –James Dents

Hey! It’s summer! Be free and happy and danceful and uninhibited and now-y! –Terri Guillemets

Summer afternoon–summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language. –Henry James

My husband refers to me as a “late adopter”. This has been true regarding certain forms of technology. I’m not the first to run with the latest innovation when it enters popular culture. But when I do jump in, it’s all the way. Then, I can’t remember life as it was before.

This summer I was surprised with a different type of “late adaptation”. It happened to be with a beverage I had never tried, even once.

On the July 4th American Independence Day holiday weekend I was with Dietician Daughter, her husband, and his Kansas family. She served me a berry and fresh fruit topped drink in a tall glass with a straw. It was deep burgundy in color. The icy glass, sweating beads of condensation, was garnished with succulent fruit. It was her version of Sangria.

On a sultry summer afternoon, around a backyard table with good people, this drink captured my attention. There was thirst-quenching coolness. There was the lushness of summer berries in red wine. I drank a second glass.

Sangria has been around for 2000+ years. When the Roman Empire reached the Iberian Peninsula of Spain and Portugal and began mixing wine into the water to sanitize it, the beginnings of Sangria were born. Long a common, informal drink on the European continent, Sangria was not widely consumed in the U.S. until it was introduced at the New York World’s Fair in 1964.

Twice I have been to the Iberian Peninsula in western Spain hiking the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, but I was not offered Sangria there. We drank wonderful Galician wines every evening as an accompaniment to the regional food. It was poured straight from the bottle and never mixed with anything.

Sangria comes from the Spanish and Portuguese word “sangre” meaning blood because of its’ dark red color. It is traditionally made with Spanish red wine, fruit, brandy, some kind of sweetener and ice. Carbonated water may or may not be added for fizz.

That’s all there is to it. This is also where Sangria becomes much more interesting. With a rudimentary knowledge of ingredients, the end result is in the hands of the maker. Dietician Daughter was imaginative in her “berry” form of creativity. Now I can’t drink it any other way.

For the rest of the summer, I began ordering Sangria in restaurants. Some were made with white wine, some with red. At the very most they might have one or two pieces of shredded, mangy looking citrus fruit in the bottom of the glass. Pizzazz and eye candy beauty were nonexistent. Not one was memorable. Not one reminded me of friends and family sharing stories and playing games on a summer afternoon. Not one begged to be repeated.

My short scientific study convinced me that the only Sangria worth the calories is the one you make yourself. With ingredients you choose. The wine must be of a quality that you would drink on its own. The fruit must be plentiful. And FRESH.

sangria ingredients: summer fruit, wine, brandy, and a jar

Here is the very best summer SANGRIA you will ever make. Or drink. It’s simple, it’s fruity, slightly dry and slightly sweet, a bit boozy, and refreshing like a lazy summer day. Pass the pitcher around a table in the mountains, by the sea, on the terrace, or in the backyard. Say, “yes” to a berry summer sangria. Then go lie in a hammock under the trees and muse.

DSCN1298 — sangria on the côte d’azur, france

CIMG0547 — sangria on a terrace in germany

LARA’S BERRY BEST SUMMER SANGRIA

fresh whole berries [or pieces of fruit] for garnish
ice to chill
750 ml bottle of Spanish Red wine, chilled [I used Ribiera de Duero. Or Rioja.]
½ C. brandy
¾ C. orange juice
3-4 T. brown sugar
any seasonal combination of blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries. [Or use peaches and mangoes]
½ orange, rind on, sliced thinly
½ apple, skin on, chopped

In a large glass jar or pitcher, place fruit and sugar and muddle with a wooden spoon or muddler.

Add OJ and brandy and muddle again. Add red wine and stir.

Taste and adjust flavors to your liking. [More brandy or OJ or sugar as you wish.] Stir again. Add ice to chill and serve as is in clear glasses.

Get the fruit on. Garnish with lots of fresh berries or fruit of choice. Serve with a spoon for scooping winey fruit into your mouth between sips.

May be stored, covered, in refrigerator to steep and chill several hours, but then don’t add ice until serving.

Best consumed within 1-2 days.

Babies and Rice So Very Nice

June 26, 2016December 27, 2023 / wendyulfers / 22 Comments

Babies are such a nice way to start people—Don Herold

leila alisa ulfers, born may 24, 2016

It’s true what they say. Grandmother hormones materialize in much the same way maternal ones do–even 30+ years later. Babies born in one’s own family are the most miraculously perfect creations in the world. Parents [and even grandparents] check out other newborns to confirm this nuance of nature. Gradually it is understood to be a “Universal Truth”. We all simply feel this way.

The good fortune to dust off my pediatric nursing and maternal memories arrived with the birth of our first granddaughter. I reflected on the gift of “presence” my mother gave me after our son and daughter were born. It’s a gift that gives both ways.

First, an [experienced] pair of hands in the early postpartum weeks gives new parents time to focus on the interplay of relationships that are suddenly right there. Baby inside, baby outside. Everything has changed. All three, mother, father and newborn, enter a timeless dance that begins with a new song.

A distinctive aura hovers over first time parents, beginning in their own relationship. Helplessly charmed by the miracle they created, they now exist inside a bubble of enhanced love and new responsibilities. At the same time, bonds between mother and baby, father and baby unfold daily, even hourly. My presence [teaching rigorous burping techniques [!], offering parental napping time, having my own cuddling and singing time] opened a bit of space for these relationships to settle and strengthen in the first month.

dressed like daddy

The second gift of being present was entirely personal. Watching my first-born baby [now a 34 year old man] tenderly hold, and croon to, his tiny, perfect daughter overwhelmed me with wonder. That “circle of life”, as clichéd as the phrase may be, sideswiped my heart with a flush of love and emotion. I’m all in now.

At night, I mulled over the randomness of dominant and recessive genes forming this beautiful baby’s eye color [murky grey to clearly blue–overnight!], the turned up button of a nose, the rosebud mouth, the one dimpled cheek, and the movable face of so many expressions [skeptical, smiling, hesitant, observant, and sometimes cross-eyed]. Even though it was too early for spontaneous social smiling, we gathered expectantly, eagerly, with each facial movement, hoping to be the first to receive that important human recognition, “I’m happy to know you.”

dimpled dream

One day I had a flashback of maternal “déjà vu” when my daughter-in-law said, “I’m overwhelmed by how precious she is to me. I didn’t know I would feel this way.” None of us do. But almost every new mother is eventually overcome by the feelings of her own power to nurture and love her baby. That’s universal too…

wearing her “what’s not to love” onesie

I observed parents and babe develop their rhythms–for communicating, comforting, handling, and, of course, feeding. The dance changed by the minute, the hour, and the day. Flexibility is key with babies. But, in less than a week, my daughter-in-law blossomed from tentative new mama to an instinctively confident one. My joy was seeing this unfold.

mama/baby love

Newborn nourishment is where everything begins. Breastfeeding rituals gradually establish themselves. Then, suddenly, they fall apart with a day of feeding frenzy or a night of longer sleeping intervals. It is an ebb and flow of constant change in the early weeks.

independent girl time–hanging out with the owls

No less important is the nourishment of parents. Emotional swings as a result of sleep deprivation, new responsibilities, and sweetly swaddled newborn love leave not-so-much-time for meal preparation.

father fatigue happens

We planned and cooked together as a team. Daughter-in-law, knowledgeable of her protein needs, prepared the meat or fish. Son stepped up to roast veggies on the grill. I offered carbohydrate rich side dishes and green leafy salads.

Leftovers were used creatively for other meals. A big batch of brown rice became the base for protein breakfasts of eggs on rice*. Two eggs cooked over easy then cut up into a bowl of rice with freshly chopped tomato on top nourished mama with easy effort.

*Recipe for “Eggs on Rice” can be found here: Comfort Food for Cal

the skeptical looks of leila, at birth

one week later

and three weeks

Grilled eggplant, peppers, onions and mushrooms from the night before became a hearty side dish the next day when combined with whole-wheat penne, sautéed garlic, fresh spinach, and a sprinkle of grated Parmesan.

One night I made an old family favorite, Mujaddarah, a Lebanese lentil and rice casserole. The addition of chopped up bacon made it not purely vegetarian. Still, it was smothered with very slowly sautéed onions that made a delicious caramelized topping. Recipe found here: People Who Pull the Magic Out of You

Babycakes nearing the one month mile marker

Extra lentils [the tiny green French kind] became the basis for another day’s cold salad with green onions, carrots, cucumber, parsley, and homemade vinaigrette.

The family food tradition I used every day and wish to pass on to my granddaughter is the simple 1-2-3 of dressing a salad. Any salad, any day, any time. With ingredients found in most kitchens.

So, with arms opened wide to embrace Leila Alisa into our family’s love, care, and nurturance, here is my simple wish:

May you grow up healthy and wise and become an interesting person. And may you always make your salad dressing from scratch.

a smile on my departure day

remembering the sweet baby smell

DEEDEE’s VINAIGRETTE DRESSING

Ingredients: Amounts will vary according to how large the salad, so all are approximations. Taste testing necessary. Stick your finger in and adjust.

basic lineup of what you need, plus some options

Dijon mustard, if you have some [optional]
Good quality vinegar of choice [balsamic, wine or champagne]
Good quality olive oil, extra virgin
Salt & Pepper
Dried basil [optional]
1 clove garlic, minced or pressed [optional]
Seed mixture–like sesame, poppy, sunflower, pumpkin, almond, walnut or whatever [optional]

Preparation:

mustard first

add vinegar, basil, S&P

slow stream of oil, stirring constantly

finger test to adjust tastes

Place a small amount of Dijon in the bottom of a bowl. [¼ to ½ tsp.]

Measure about 2-3 spoonfuls of vinegar over mustard. Add the garlic, seeds and basil, if using.
Sprinkle in S&P.
Then, very slowly, pour in a thin stream of olive oil, blending rapidly with a small spoon. There is no exact amount of oil. You simply taste with your finger and adjust proportions of vinegar to oil, as you prefer. Adjust salt.
Pour dressing over prepared greens and veggies. Toss together.
Grind of fresh pepper over all and serve.

Voilà! A lifetime of salads without bottled dressing.

Colorado supper with a glass of white

the one month director’s meeting

Spoons and Cookies

May 21, 2016May 19, 2026 / wendyulfers / 15 Comments

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. –William Morris

No kitchen is complete without a container of wooden spoons on the counter. Both useful and beautiful. In our Paris apartment, a wire basket holds an assortment of spoons, soup ladles, spatulas, salad servers and flat bladed stirrers. When home in Colorado, an antique stoneware pitcher and sugar bowl overflow with old and new implements. All wood.

I come about this affection genetically. My mother had a collection of well-used wooden spoons. Some were from her mother, whom we called “Gram”.

Before she married my grandfather, Gram was a Home Economics teacher in the local high school. That was when “Home Ec” was taught in U.S. public schools. Several of her oldest spoons now have an asymmetrical edge on the left side. This came about after many years of right-handed stirring by my grandmother, my mother, and me.

In Gabrielle Hamilton’s book, Blood, Bones, and Butter, her French-born mother was known to wield a wooden spoon as an extension of her arm:

“She lived in our kitchen, ruled the house with an oily wooden spoon in her hand, and forced us all to eat dark, briny, wrinkled olives, small birds we would have liked as pets, and cheeses that looked like they might well bear Legionnaire’s Disease….Her burnt orange Le Creuset pots and casseroles, scuffed and blackened, were constantly at work…cooking things with tails, claws, and marrow-filled bones–whatever she was stewing and braising and simmering to feed our family of seven.” –from Blood, Bones & Butter, Random House, 2011

Legacy spoons are recycled pieces of history. The patina and grain are enhanced by generations of cooks stirring rich stews, thick hot chocolate, or biscuit batters.

Wooden spoons and implements are not meant to be purely decorative. I use them all the time for cooking or baking. The difference is I treat them like royalty compared to other kitchenware. They don’t roll around in overstuffed kitchen drawers. They aren’t abused in soapy cycles of the dishwasher. They are hand washed with a scrub brush and hot running water.

When my spoons become noticeably dry and splintery, it’s time for a sanding, smoothing, oiling timeout.

rejuvenation tools: sandpaper, steel wool and mineral oil

Fine grade sandpaper exfoliates surface problems. Smooth wood grain quickly emerges. Rinse off sanding dust under tap water. Air-dry and then apply the final finish.

No olive oil or furniture polish should condition wood used in food preparation. Use an inexpensive bottle of plain mineral oil. Massage into the wood from head to handle. Buff off excess oil. Admire them briefly.

Drawing on William Morris’ philosophy, it’s time to make them useful. Baking is a good idea. The gold standard of baking in our household for many years was Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies.

In my teens, I learned that the best homemade cookie batters are creamed, beaten, and stirred by hand with a sturdy, long handled wooden spoon. I have been making these cookies for decades–for my adolescent sweet-tooth cravings, for a young husband in early marriage, for the children-raising years overseas, for nieces, nephews, sisters, and countless friends. The contractor and crews who built our Colorado cabin ate “Wendy’s Cookies” from beginning to end of construction. Some say it is better built because of that mixture of oats, chocolate, and physical labor.

Wooden spoons are like the trees from which they are honed. They are organically beautiful. They are eminently utilitarian. They can be passed through many generations of kitchens and cooks. In this way they live…maybe forever.

CHOCOLATE CHIP OATIES

1 C butter
3/4 C packed brown sugar
3/4 C granulated sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract [use high quality vanilla]
2 eggs
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 C unbleached flour (if you like fatter cookies, add a bit more flour)
2 C whole oats [not instant]
1 1/2 C semi-sweet chocolate chips or cut up dark chocolate bars or a mixture of both. Or use mini-sized chocolate chips.

In a large bowl, beat butter, sugars, and vanilla until light and creamy. You can melt the butter first to speed this up. Beat eggs lightly together. Add to creamed ingredients.

Beat everything together with a sturdy wooden spoon. Stir in salt and soda. Add flour one cup at a time, mixing in each cup completely. Stir in oats and the chocolate bits.

You can double this recipe for a larger batch because it freezes very well.

Drop spoonfuls of dough onto un-greased baking sheet. [A melon ball or small ice cream scoop holds the perfect amount.] Bake at 375 F. [190 C.] 8-10 minutes, depending on oven hotness. For crispy cookies, bake to a darker brown. Lighter brown results in chewy cookies.

Remove immediately from baking sheet to cool. If you transfer to newspaper for cooling, it will soak up extra oil from bottom of cookies. Store in food tins lined with wax or parchment paper. Or in jars as my daughter does. Keep one container out for noshing. Freeze the rest.

Foxglove and Oreos on the Camino

April 13, 2016February 25, 2026 / wendyulfers / 16 Comments

The Road has no beginning, and the Road has no end. The towns they run together and they run apart again. Right now is the only moment, and Time is the time to go and make yourself a pilgrim on the Road to Santiago. ¡Buen Camiño! –David M. Gitlitz & Linda Kay Davidson, The Pilgrimage Road to Santiago

For more than 1000 years, the Camino de Santiago [the Way of St. James] has been a pilgrimage route from the foothills of the Pyrennes, in southwestern France and northwestern Spain, to the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela on the Iberian Peninsula. In ancient times it was undertaken for spiritual cleansing or “losing time in Hell”.

Why is this pilgrimage so historically significant? Here’s the story.

James was a fisherman on the Sea of Galilee and the 4^th disciple recruited by Jesus. He was assigned to the Iberian Peninsula to spread “the word of God”. He made it as far as Galicia in northwestern Spain. Upon returning to the Holy Land he was tortured. Adding insult to injury, he was beheaded. Became a martyr. His body was secreted out of Jerusalem on a boat. Across the Mediterranean Sea, through the Straits of Gibraltar, along the Iberian coast, back to the shores of Galicia. His tomb became enshrined in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.

longview of the cathedral from a distance

So began the third most important Christian pilgrimage in the Middle Ages, after Rome and Jerusalem. During the Renaissance and years of religious reformation [16^th century] the Camino’s importance waned. It fell even more out of favor during the Age of Enlightenment [18^th century]. Yet pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela never stopped completely. Nowadays the Camino is rocking in popularity. 262,459 certificates, or Compostelas, were awarded in 2015. Pilgrims traveled by foot, bicycle, or horseback. Some in wheelchairs.

In ancient times as well as today, travelers often carry their provisions in a backpack, camp out, or sleep in hostels, retreating from normal life for days, weeks, or months. Usually their journey ends at the cathedral in Santiago.

There is also another “way” to experience the Camino, which is what I did.

In May 2014, I was with a group of women who started the journey where most people end–in the courtyard of the cathedral. We walked from there to the actual “ends of the earth” [Finisterre] on the Atlantic Ocean. We carried only a daypack with water and rain gear. Our worldly goods were transported to the next charming “casa rurales” [bed and breakfast] along the route. After hiking all day we enjoyed a hot bath or shower, delicious Galician cuisine and wine, followed by restful sleep–in a bed.

The Camiño de Fisterra-Muxía is the road less travelled these days, particularly in the off-season. On the fourth day we arrived at the lighthouse on Cape Finisterre overlooking the ocean. On the fifth day we walked up the coastline to Muxía where we received the Compostellana [Certificate of Accomplishment]. You must walk at least 100 km to receive the certificate. We walked 117.

Our group came together through the joint venture of two American women, Sally and Sienna, who met in Spain while Sally was producing a documentary entitled, “Walking the Camino: Six Ways to Santiago”. In 2013 they began organizing small group trips for people to experience the Camino as a one week venture.

The topography of Galicia is extremely hilly. It is also very rainy which keeps the landscape lush and green. And, in May, there were fields upon fields of pink foxglove. Future heart medication [digitalis] growing wild.

“Oreos” were spoken of frequently. In Spain they are tiny barns of granite or shale stone built on mushroom-like pedestals. Functioning as storage granaries in rural areas, they are mounted off the ground to deter rodents. Later, when I learned the Galician word was actually “hórreos”, I understood what they had in common with the name of a cookie. Absolutely nothing. But “oreos” is what I remember.

stone “hórreos” are used to store grain and keep rodents out

Forewarned about the hilly terrain, I brought hiking sticks, which gave me a long rhythmic stride. So I was often by myself, up ahead, looking for trail markers [the yellow scallop shell or the painted yellow line] and discovering new terrain. After the first day, I realized that hiking alone was going to be my experience on the Camino.

Everyone goes on a journey for some reason. It’s often initiated during a moment of transition, a need to “walk through” personal issues, let go of the old, let in the new, or to simply break up routines. It might bubble up as a search for healing or forgiveness or a time to give thanks or to mark a special occasion. Perhaps the motivation is to meet new people, hear their stories, see new places, rediscover something forgotten or discover something new. Journeys can be the catalyst for creative inspiration, finding harmony in nature, exercise, penance, meditation, or delving into the spiritual.

My own journeys are usually discovery seeking ones. They widen my perspective, feed curiosity, and replenish me with the adventure. Those quiet hours in the hills, forests, villages, foxglove fields and countryside of Galicia brought real contentment. I was part of the changes in weather–the pouring rain, looming storm clouds and intermittent sun. I was one with the topography–the out of breath up-hills, the knee jarring down-hills and the blessed stretches of flat terrain in between. Often I was lost in thought about the history and natural beauty of this part of the world. It is impossible not to feel connected to others who walked the same trail over past millenniums.

Day 3, last 5k of steep downhill, long negotiation of massive boulders ahead

Evening meals were social bonding time. We were treated to delicious regional cuisine including famous Galician wines. Arroz con calamares [rice with squid], zamburiñas [scallops in shells], and a giant fried prehistoric style fish that looked ominous but melted in the mouth.

A uniquely Galician tradition, the queimada ceremony, was performed for our group. Queimada is made from a special Spanish liqueur distilled from grapes, flavored with spices, herbs, sugar, lemon peel and coffee beans. The ingredients are put together into a clay pot, set on fire and allowed to burn slowly. The concoction is stirred frequently by lifting a ladle of flaming liquid and pouring it back into the pot. When the flame burns blue, it is ready to serve in ceramic cups.

There is a recitation chanted as the queimada burns–to purify the drink and to share it with the souls of family and friends not present to enjoy it. Special powers are conferred on the queimada and to those drinking it. We didn’t experience anything supernatural, but there was a lot of infectious laughter and animated conversation after a long hiking day. Sound sleep followed.

Upon reaching the cliff at the end of the world on Cape Finisterre, we saw blackened remains of burned clothes and shoes on the rocks. It’s a tradition for those who venture all the way to give up their worldly goods. None of us were moved to burn anything. Instead we picked up a stone to throw into the sea, giving it the name of something to let go of.

I couldn’t bring myself to throw my stone away. I kept touching it in my pocket and wondering about the hesitation. My friend Margaret suggested that I wasn’t ready to let go. There was something I needed to do with that energy. She was right. Three weeks later, in June 2014, I published my first story on this website. Later, I noticed white markings on the stone that reminded me of a face. I keep it on the bedside table for good luck.

All pilgrimages have a fixed end point. But they begin wherever you start walking.

“The going is more memorable than the getting there.”

When you are ready, just put on your boots, and go…

galician coastline, iberian peninsula, spain

nina, sally, carole, wendy, teresa, laurel

Some of the photos in this story are courtesy of Nina Cooper or Teresa Goodwin.

Other stories featuring Sally Bentley: French-splaining American Thanksgiving, Sex in a Pan, Leaving Paris and Hemingway

Bags of Laughter

March 17, 2016April 6, 2023 / wendyulfers / 14 Comments

When laughter helps without doing harm, when laughter lightens, realigns, reorders, reasserts power and strength, this is laughter that causes health. When laughter makes people glad they are alive, happy to be here, more conscious of love…lifts sadness and severs anger…when they are made bigger, made better, more generous, more sensitive, that is sacred [laughter]. –Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Sometimes I laugh so hard the tears run down my legs. –Unknown author

It is bad to suppress laughter. It goes back down to your hips. –Unknown author

Laughter is part of the universal human language. Everyone speaks laughter. Laughter exercises the diaphragm, the abdominal, respiratory, facial, leg and back muscles. It’s a workout!

Laughter is yogic. Nothing works faster to bring the body and mind back in balance than a good laugh.

Laughter is cathartic. When the good feeling from a big laugh remains, it lifts your mood for hours.

Recently, some tear inducing out loud laughter took over my day. Bursts of laughter broke free for hours. It made me feel great.

The source was a story written by Alec, a friend with a gift for spinning a comedic phrase. This time it was personal to my experience of having lived in Germany and then making a specific request to my friend.

Alec knows there are things I miss from Germany, so he always offers to bring “a list” when he and his wife drive to Paris to visit. This time I tacked on “one more thing” to the list, but felt it needed more description:

…Oh, there is one more thing you could bring. It’s very lightweight and packable, but you have to go to the Oberursel Altstadt to find it. On the main street is the One Euro Store. Not everything there is one euro, but it’s a cheap junk store you should know about anyway.

Inside, they have these little cloth shopping bags that come wrapped in a cloth carrying case. The name “Reisenthel” is on the side label. They cost more than one euro, about 4.95 each. They are brilliant. I use them daily or give them away to family and friends, doing my “green best”.

I only like solid benign colors. Black, blue, green, brown. No patterns or foofy florals. 6-10 bags if you find them…

I received the following email from him the day before their arrival. It was titled:

On A Mission for Wendy

I loitered outside the dollar store in the winter cold, waiting until the store emptied before I approached the owner.

Uncertain of his level of English, I said with some hesitation, “Guten Tag. I am shopping for a woman-friend who lived here six years ago. She asked me to pick up some packable lightweight shopping bags she used to buy in your store.”

He remained silent so I continued, “They’re made by Reisenthel. She gives them away to be environmentally friendly. Do you still carry them?”

He stared at me and I wasn’t sure if he was mentally translating what I said from English to German or was wondering if I was crazy enough to think a dollar store carried the same merchandise over such a long period of time.

He gestured to a box that had packable shopping bags in a floral pattern. Apologetically I said, “Um, she doesn’t really want a floral pattern.”

Again, the stare as he said, “She wants to be environmentally friendly but doesn’t like flowers?”

He had a point, but I stood my ground. “I think she wants to be fashionably friendly to the environment.”

This time his stare lasted even longer. He scratched his head. I couldn’t tell if he was thinking about whether he had other bags in the store or if he was beginning to understand why a person like Donald Trump could be elected if Americans were all like me.

He opened a cabinet and handed me a slightly larger shopping bag-inside-a-bag, this time in basic black. The tag indicated it was manufactured by “Schneider”.

Now it was my turn to hesitate. Finally I got up the nerve to say, “Um, this is a Schneider bag, but my friend really wants a Reisenthel bag.”

I felt completely stupid. I said “Reisenthel” like it was some kind of designer brand from Bloomingdales or Saks, but the shelves lined with cheap bric-a-brac reminded me I was far from Fifth Avenue.

By the look on his face, I feared he was going to hit me with one of the dozens of snow globes within easy reach. Instead he just blinked. It was one of those blinks where the eyelids remain closed long enough that I could have slipped out of the store. Maybe he was offering me an out, but I stayed. I was on a mission for Wendy.

Finally, he opened his eyes and said, in an accent heavier with each exchange, “And what, may I ask, is so special about a Reisenthel bag?”

Luckily for me I came prepared with an email from my friend. I pulled it out of my pocket and quickly read aloud what she wrote. “Um, well, she says here that, ‘They are brilliant.’”

He squinted at me, considering my words. Then he repeated very slowly, as if offering me a chance to take one of the small green pills prescribed by my psychiatrist, “These bags. They are brilliant?”

Rather than hold his stare, I looked back at my friend’s email and blurted out the first words that caught my eyes. “She says here they should be benign”. Then, realizing how incredibly stupid that sounded, I tried to make a joke with a forced chuckle, “But I assume all of your bags are benign, right?”

For the first time he looked at me with something other than pity or spite and said with clear relief, “So you want nine bags?”

I looked down at my shoes. It took only a moment to realize my joke had been misunderstood. I looked up and then again at my friend’s email with the very explicit directions of what she wanted.

Drawing upon an inner strength, built from more than 20 years of living overseas, battle-tested by language and cultural barriers from Asia to Europe. I looked him straight in the eye, and said…

“No. I’ll take ten…Danke.”

It doesn’t happen nearly often enough–this kind of mirthful laughter that tickles to my core and ripples throughout the day. I laughed until I cried. Then I laughed all over again–thanks to my friend.

…and a great family laugh too…

Other Alec antics told here: Taiwan Green-Marble Pesto

Living Both Sides of the French Coin

March 8, 2016July 21, 2024 / wendyulfers / 15 Comments

At one time or another, almost everyone has been caught in some kind of bureaucratic nightmare. Where you can’t complete a task because of missing a stamp, a chop, a signature, a photo or a form. These experiences occur wherever you live in the world. When they happen, it’s important to find a way to recalibrate, to feel glad to be in your life again. For me the reset button began with a serendipitous stop in a Parisian brasserie.

I had just returned to our home in Paris after two months in the U.S. First order of business was to exchange my old French telecom SIM card for one to fit a new cell phone purchased over the holidays. It’s a pleasant ten-minute walk to the neighborhood store where we have been customers for six years.

Stepping inside, the blast of overheated air seemed minor compared to the long queue of people ahead of me. Shedding coat and scarf, I settled in for the wait by staring at mute TV monitors rolling repetitious ads. A sign on the wall reminded everyone to behave courteously at all times. Potential customers entered, assessed the non-moving line, and spun back out. A few lined up behind me. Ninety minutes later, it was finally my turn.

I explained that I needed a replacement SIM card to fit my new cell phone. Account numbers were given. Alors, mais non! The account was not in my name. No transaction was possible without the account holder’s identity card. The “account holder”, my husband, was at work outside the city with his passport and carte sejour [residence card] in his briefcase.

I pleaded courteously, in poorly phrased French, about how long and patiently I had waited, what an easy transaction it was. Surely the man could see our long-standing account on the computer. He agreed it would take 30 seconds to give me a new SIM card. However, I did not have the proper IDs. He raised his shoulders and arms in a shrug and pursed his lips. A very French gesture. No further negotiation.

Outside in much cooler air, I walked twenty minutes to another part of the quartier to buy a roasted chicken, all the while fuming over French “rules”. The boucherie sign said “CLOSED” until 3:00PM. Now, both annoyed and hungry, I decided to wait it out in an upscale brasserie around the corner. Although well known by everyone living in the area, I had never been inside. Unknowingly, upon entering the door, my reset button began to tick.

A man in a red tie and black suit greeted and then ushered me to a small table for two. It was laid with a textured white cover, starched cloth napkins, heavy silverware, and bistro glassware. The menu was large and colorful with “CUISINE FAMILIALE ET BOURGEOISE” in bold letters.

The menu covered a range of fresh seafood platters–oysters, lobster, shrimp, and crab–served on ice with lemon halves, brown bread and butter, or starters of salads and terrines, main courses of viandes or poissons [meat or fish], desserts of profiteroles au chocolat chaud, crème caramel, glaces and sorbets. Très French indeed.

I chose two starters as a meal. OEufs durs mayonnaise is one of my favorites. Hard-boiled eggs with fresh, homemade mayo and garnished with greens. Followed by a salad of frisée, croutons, and bacon. A silver basket of sliced artisanal baguette was placed on the table almost immediately, along with a tall pepper grinder, a carafe of water and a glass of wine.

In France it’s easy and comfortable to dine alone, any time of day or night. As a single diner you are rather ghost-like, invisible to others dining and talking with companions. I sipped red wine, relaxed into the back of the cushioned leather chair, and contentedly looked around. A layer of frustration melted away.

At the entrance was a long brass bar framed in wood. While the bartender busily prepared coffee or drinks, his eyes took in everything else going on in the room. The inside lighting was muted by wall sconces and chandeliers with pleated shades.

Servers wore traditional long black aprons over white shirts and black ties. They moved in fluid choreography; carrying food from the kitchen, unobtrusively refilling carafes of water, breadbaskets, or wine glasses at tables with standing silver buckets and cloth draped bottles.

A woman swirled in the door wearing a floor length fur coat, meeting friends already seated. An elderly man at the table next to me was obviously a regular. His meal appeared without ordering, including an espresso at the end. He donned a fedora, slipped a newspaper under his arm, and departed with a handshake to the man at the door.

My food was served in two leisurely courses. I never felt hurried. Another layer of annoyance fell away.

By 2:45PM, the atmosphere changed. Diners drifted away and the bartender’s pace visibly slowed as he cleaned, polished and put away wine glasses. Servers casually cleared and reset tables, chatting back and forth to each other. A table of four lingered over a bottle of wine and an intense discussion.

I had finished eating, but remained sitting and rethinking the day’s events. Earlier, the score tally had been Paris–1, Wendy–0, feeling defeated by narrow mindedness and lack of service. Several hours later, my mood was lighter, my attitude readjusted. All because of doing a very normal Parisian thing–taking myself to lunch, blending in with culture and ambience that I both admire and appreciate.

La belle vie en France–c’est comme ça. Final score: French bureaucracy-1, Wendy’s love for Paris-1. Not a tie…I won.

Le Stella Brasserie
133 avenue Victor Hugo, Paris, France 75116
Open everyday: 8:00AM-11:45PM

OEUFS MAYONNAISE [courtesy of Paris Paysanne]

2 fresh egg yolks, room temperature
2 pinches salt
1/2 tsp. Dijon mustard
1 1/2 cups olive oil
dash of H2O
drop of red wine vinegar
1-2 hard-boiled eggs per person
Mâche [lamb’s lettuce] or greens for salad/garnish, cayenne pepper, optional

Preparation:

Whisk egg yolks together with salt and mustard until creamy and light in color. SLOWLY begin to add olive oil–a few drops at a time to start, whisking vigorously all the time as you go. It should become thicker as the oil is mixed in, but not liquidy. Add all the oil until it is finished. If it seems too stiff, add a dash of H2O and continue whisking. Finish with a drop of red wine vinegar and salt to taste.

1452882286972 — photo credit, *Paris Paysanne*

Cut hard-boiled eggs in half. Top with fresh mayo. Garnish with a sprinkle of cayenne pepper and greens as desired.

1452881750375 — photo credit, *Paris Paysanne*

Rocky’s Meadow Mountain Cafe

January 14, 2016April 6, 2023 / wendyulfers / 16 Comments

A year ago I wrote a story about my favourite Colorado hometown cafe. It was titled A Mountain Gem for 70 Years. The owner, Rocky St. John, passed away right before Christmas. In tribute to her, I have revised my words and added additional photos. Her sons Ben and Joe, along with their father, are keeping the cafe open in her memory. She trained them well.

Allenspark, Colorado lies in a curvy bend off Highway 7, between Estes Park and the valley below. As you drive past the majestic scenery of Wild Basin and the backside of Long’s Peak, it’s easy to simply bypass this tiny town. But if you turn right onto the business spur, it’s probably because you know about Rocky’s Meadow Mountain Cafe.

On a hillside halfway through town is a small green building with purple trim. Colorful buttons are mixed into the cement between slate stone steps climbing to the front porch. The main room has knotty pine walls and an antique potbelly stove, radiating warmth. Shelves are lined with an eccentric collection of salt-and-pepper shakers. Local artwork is for sale on the wall. Behind this quaint façade is a long history of food, friendly service, and loyal customer relationships.

It began in 1946 with a local character named Lil Lavicka. Known as the “Pie Lady”, Lil was famous for her homemade baked goods. As part of a divorce settlement, her husband hastily built a two-room cafe across from her tiny home. Lil’s Pie House flourished for twenty summer seasons.

Then, after several changes of ownership, Meadow Mountain Cafe was born. Breakfast and lunch became the daily fare. Food was fresh and home-cooked to order. Coffee was hot–with a touch of cinnamon. Consistently good food, friendly service, and reasonable pricing enhanced its’ reputation beyond the boundaries of the small community. Locals and tourists line up for a table inside or on the covered porch, complete with hummingbirds, flowers and an overhanging pine tree. Lil Lavicka’s seasonal pie house evolved into a legendary year-round cafe with returning customers who became friends.

Roxanne [Rocky] St. John began waiting tables at Meadow Mountain more than 30 years ago. It wasn’t long before her cooking finesse and creativity nudged her into the kitchen full time. Rocky worked the grill for several female owners until finally, in 2007, she took over solo ownership. Already an established part of the ongoing success of Meadow Mountain, it was time to put her personal stamp on the place.

Rocky introduced two new house specialties–the veggie burger and the green chili sauce for huevos rancheros. Cinnamon spiked coffee is still standard, of course. She chose the outside paint colors and easy-on-the-eye peach walls for the kitchen. The button-inlaid steps were designed and built for safer access in all weather conditions. An herb garden was planted out in back. Inside, the eclectic collection of coffee mugs and salt-and-pepper shakers [always part of her style] continued to grow. The kitchen blasting music-of-choice ran along the lines of Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash.

We have been driving from our cabin in Estes Park to Meadow Mountain Cafe for more than 15 years. It never disappoints. It’s not meant to be fast food. You wait patiently and sip good coffee, talk leisurely. Perhaps you warm your back near the antique stove, muse over the salt-and-pepper collection, read a book or eavesdrop quietly on another conversation. You watch regulars walk into the kitchen to say hello. At a corner table, friends sit and play cards after their meal. A man at the counter leans his chin into one hand and dozes, holding a coffee cup with the other.

Orders parade out of the kitchen. Coffee mugs are refilled. Homemade brown bread, thickly sliced for toast or sandwiches, is baked twice daily in summer to keep up with demand. The scene is homey and multi-dimensional–from the diversity of customers stepping through the door to the din of country or rock-n-roll music pouring out of the kitchen. Conversation and laughter is spiced with the clatter of plates and silverware as tables empty and fill.

beaded tapestry made by a friend of Rocky’s

What sustains this kind of success in a town of just over 500 people? Rocky, along with the women before her, crafted a timeless formula. It begins with an old-fashioned hard work ethic. It’s maintained by keeping quality high, service friendly, and community relationships strong. Rocky was passionate about what she did and consistently did it very well. And then, just maybe, that hint of cinnamon in the coffee didn’t hurt either.

Rocky St. John, 1960-2015

new step up to the cafe

Rocky was a well-known and well-loved figure in the Estes Valley community. Meadow Mountain will continue to flourish in her memory. After a 70-year legacy of female owners [since 1946], the cafe will now operate under the expertise of Dan, Ben, and Joe St. John. In Ben’s words, “We have been well-trained.” Indeed.

And the rest of us will continue to be there to support them.

Looking Back To the Present

December 3, 2015April 7, 2023 / wendyulfers / 30 Comments

Long ago, in December 1570, the first Christmas market was held on a cobblestoned square in front of a towering Gothic cathedral. Torches and candles lit the wintry darkness. Religious objects and decorations were offered for sale. A bowl of steaming stew might have been ladled from a cauldron over an open fire to entice passersby to linger and warm themselves.

Now, 445 years later, this fairy tale-like tradition continues in the “Capital of Christmas”, Strasbourg, France.

Strasbourg is situated in the Alsace region on France’s eastern border, across the Rhine River from Germany. Its’ strategic location dates back to 12 BC where, as part of the Roman Empire, it became the crossroads of Europe. Frequented by both travelers and invaders, Strasbourg has bounced back and forth repeatedly in political tugs of war. At the end of WWII, Germany returned the city to France for the last time. It retains strong remnants of Franco-German culture and tradition from the entwined history.

The original “centre-ville” is a small island formed by branches of the River Ill [La Grande Île]. Here, the red sandstone Cathedral is the most striking architectural feature. Construction begun in 1176 was finally completed in 1439. An impressive 263 years of engineering, masonry, and carpentry featuring a single Gothic spire which rises 142 meters [466 feet]!

The oldest Christmas Market is also one of Europe’s largest. Three hundred cottage-like wooden stalls offer food, drink, and seasonal goodies along with an impressive array of gifts and decorations. A 30-meter fir tree from the mountains is beautifully decorated in Place Kléber. The market officially opens the last weekend of November. This year we made plans early, knowing the crowds are daunting. It didn’t turn out to be that way.

Late Friday afternoon began with the usual glowing stalls selling festive wares, ambient street decorations, lights sparkling in cold, wintry dusk. It smelled even better. Aromas of roasting chestnuts, gingerbread, grilled brats and sauerkraut, mingled with steaming vats of spiced vin chaud or glühwein [hot wine].

While Mark was on his assigned mission of photographing the charm that transforms Strasbourg into Christmas wonderland, I busied myself locating the best cup of vin chaud. It is a serious task. They are not all alike!

hot wine comes in red, white, or nonalcoholic juice, pretzels on the side

Unsuccessful initial research shooed me away from the bustling cathedral area. Winding my way to La Petite France, the old tanners district near the river locks, I found a small outcropping of stalls. Here was the place. “Le meilleur vin chaud dans la marché” [the very best in the whole market]. Not gagging-ly sweet, not cloyingly spiced, just good quality red wine, perfectly heated with the right amount of subtle spice. I was scientifically sure. The vendor beamed when I told him this “Truth”.

the best vin chaud in strasbourg is *here*

This year’s market was very different for several reasons. First were the roadblocks to cars entering the city center. We parked outside and walked in. Secondly, there were heavily armed police and military positioned on every bridge, square, and corner intersection. In teams of two or three, they stood, walked about, or drove slowly down the [now] pedestrian-only streets. We meandered leisurely through even the most popular areas without jostling shoulder-to-shoulder crowds. At 7:00PM the stalls promptly boarded up. It was not a typical opening night.

We slipped into a wine bar to warm up. The owner told us this was the first year he could look out the windows and see across the street. Normally it would be a wall-to-wall crush of people until late in the evening.

Two weeks before, November 13, was a tragic night in Paris. Terrorists killed 130 people and injured 400 others. France is still tender, reeling from an assault on the lifestyle and young lives in a proud democratic republic.

We paused next to a memorial for Paris victims near the towering Christmas tree. We noted the French tri-color worked into holiday decorating. These outpourings of nationalism, part memoriam and part act of defiance were not surprising. After a tragedy, solidarity and resilience are often displayed this way.

Still, it can be difficult to know how to move on when inexplicable things happen. We live in Paris and didn’t know the victims. But we learned of them.

The story about the café owner of La Belle Équipe is particularly poignant. One of the shootings occurred at this popular neighborhood bistro. His wife was among the fatalities. She died on the floor, in his arms. This man is Jewish. His wife was Muslim. They have a son. Their family represents the healthy diversity permeating Paris and France.

After burying the mother of his son, the still grieving owner said it was out of the question to close his café. “We must go to concerts. We must sit on terraces. We can still smile with scars on our face. We will lick our wounds and live with our scars. It doesn’t stop us. There is no choice.”

I am struck by this difficult truth after disaster strikes. Of course he is right. One way to reaffirm hope is to return to the things we normally do. Going to work, eating in restaurants with friends, attending concerts, playing with children, musing over coffee on a terrace, visiting museums, strolling through a Christmas market…

The ability to persevere over hundreds of years to complete the building of a cathedral is the same sentiment that propels us forward when heartbreaking events happen. Giving up is not a choice. Instead, as we lean into the collective embrace of family, friends and community, we hold onto our hope for the future as tightly as we can.

Wishing you and yours a warm holiday season of togetherness.

[All photos courtesy of MEU, in-house photographer extraordinaire.]

Simply Sally

November 5, 2015April 7, 2023 / wendyulfers / 16 Comments

I have a problem trying to figure out what to cook for dinner. It’s silly because if you hand me a restaurant menu I know right away what will feed my hunger. My husband always asks what I am ordering before he makes up his own mind. He knows he will want it too. Especially after he orders something else and then sees the better choice in front of me.

Cooking at home is a repetitive daily hang-up. Over the years I have relied on friends whose culinary skills seem effortless, nurturing, even joyful. This kind of decision-making must be inborn. It bypassed my genetic makeup. Despite 39 years of marriage and two children, daily cooking is my predicament.

During our years overseas, friends taught me to prepare simple, delicious one-dish meals to nourish a growing, hungry family. Some of those meals became staples that over time no longer required following a recipe. Mujuddarah, People Who Pull the Magic Out of You Rancher’s Pasta, Lebanese egg-potato salad, veggie fried rice, Spaghetti Josephine Garlic and Girlfriends to name a few.

By the time we moved to France, children had grown and there were only two of us. It was also when I met my friend Sally.

Sally is an artist and teacher who moved to Bolivia for two years in the late 1980s. She became involved in running a house to support children living on the streets. A young boy in the program captured her heart and she adopted him. In 1990, they returned to the U.S. where she resumed her teaching job in the Arizona public schools.

Sally is a born nurturer who also happens to love cooking. Every day. She always has a plan.

Her picnics, in our Parisian neighborhood park, were memorable. Over colorful Bolivian blankets spread on lush grass, she arranged platters of sliced poached chicken, fragrant with spices, raisins, and sautéed onions, thyme and rosemary roasted potatoes, Mediterranean quinoa salad, cheeses and fruits, and chocolaty brownies. Flutes of champagne or a glass of wine served as accompaniment. Flowers stood in a vase. Sally made it look effortless. On many summer evenings, she and her husband charmed a revolving door of houseguests over the two years they lived here.

One day, undecided about a cooking idea, I asked Sally what she was making for dinner. She said, “Galette.” What? I knew galette in the form of a cake [Galette de Roi] served in the early days of the New Year in France. It has a plastic toy king baked inside that is a good luck charm for the finder.

“No, no, no”, Sally said, “This is different. Galette can be savory as well.”

Traditionally, galette is a covered crust over cooked ingredients–savory [meat or veggies] or sweet [fruit]. She began to describe the process but I cut her off. “I’ll never remember, just show me.” We agreed to meet the following week in my kitchen-with-a-view for an afternoon of cooking.

That evening, on the day we met, I was to attend a potluck dinner party in the courtyard of our apartment building. All the other residents are French. At the time I didn’t know them well and felt intimidated by what to bring.

Back in the kitchen, there was a bottle of Burgundy in the counter wine rack. We opened it and got busy. From start to finish, preparing a galette couldn’t have been easier. A little glass of wine is a great buffer. –Sally Boyle

Sally brought cooked chicken breasts and potatoes, roasted red peppers, spinach, zucchini, olives, onion, and soft goat cheese. While I shredded the chicken, she sautéed chopped onion and sliced zucchini rounds in a pan with olive oil until tender. Frozen pastry circles thawed quickly at room temperature on a baking sheet.

It was simple assembly after that–one meat galette and the other, vegetarian.

For the meaty one, we layered chicken, potatoes, and vegetables [zucchini, onion, red pepper and olives] over the pastry, seasoning well with salt and pepper. [Add red pepper flakes if you like more heat. Yes I do!] For vegetarian, we used a combination of cooked spinach, goat cheese, zucchini, red peppers, olives and onions.

Cover with the top pastry or fold over in half and seal the edges. [I have also made a one-crust version, which is even lighter.] Make holes in crust to let out steam. Bake 20 minutes at 210 Centigrade or 400 Fahrenheit. Voila–an instant main course worthy of a king, Serve warm or cooled to room temperature. Add green salad and glass of wine, as desired.

Later that evening at the party, I discreetly placed my contribution on the table with other food offerings. Then moved away to meet and greet neighbors. As people began to eat, I overheard several women murmuring about something delicious on their plates. It was the galette! They wanted to know how to make it and what was inside.

Surprised to receive notice in a foodie crowd, I said, “Oh, it was very simple…”

Simple, that is, if you have a friend like Sally.

Champagne in France: “Tasting the Stars”

October 8, 2015October 9, 2025 / wendyulfers / 21 Comments

photo (1) — champagne sunset, amalfi coast, italy

There is nothing more beautiful than a sunset, viewed over a glass of chilled Champagne. –Jared M. Brown

I only drink Champagne when I am happy and when I am sad. –Lily Bollinger

Too much of anything is bad, but too much Champagne is just right. –Mark Twain

In the beginning, Champagne was not a wine. It was an area in northern France known for producing fine wool. Scattered vineyards made a bit of wine for local imbibing. It was rough and pinkish brown and bubbles were considered a bad sign. For several centuries there was a lot of sacking, burning and desecration of the region, especially during the Crusades and the 100 Years War.

In the late 1660s, a young Benedictine Monk named Dom Pérignon was assigned to the Abbey d’Hautvillers to bring it back to life and productivity. This meant resurrecting the vineyards.

Here is where legend and fact collide. Dom Pérignon has been credited for “inventing” champagne. A famous quote speaks of him hailing fellow monks, “Come quickly. I’m tasting the stars!” But the truth is–Champagne invented itself.

All wines bubble when grapes are pressed. Yeast cells on the skins mix with sugar in the juice and fermentation begins. But no one knew about yeasts then. Bubbles were considered a flaw of nature. Fizzy wines were unacceptable for Mass.

What Dom Pérignon did do was pave the way for the Champagne industry of today. He set down some “Golden Rules for Winemaking”. Like using only the best grapes and discarding the rest, pruning hard in the spring, harvesting in cool weather, and pressing the grapes very gently, keeping the juices separate with each pressing.

The most important thing he did was blend different grapes. The harmony he created between balance and taste was unequaled at the time. He mixed grapes from different parts of the region–a completely new concept. Myths arose because he was extraordinary, but in actuality he just made better wines than anyone else. He was an innovator and adaptor with keen observation and taste. He started using corks as stoppers rather than wooden pegs. Still, most of the wine he made was red, not white. And definitely not sparkling.

Geographic proximity to Paris [and royalty] further enhanced the region’s reputation. Coronations in the cathedral in Reims featured massive celebrations. Partying Kings and courtiers drank the local wine and decided the erratic tingle in the mouth was rather pleasant. By 1730, Champagne was the beverage throughout European courts.

chagall stained glass in reims cathedral

Production, however, remained unpredictable. It had either too much or too little fizz. There was also the danger element. Because fermentation inside the bottle was uncontrolled, excessive build up of gas caused unexpected explosions. More than a few people were maimed or killed.

Still, love for Champagne continued to rise in France and throughout Europe.

Napoleon purposefully stopped in Épernay before every military campaign to pick up a supply. “In victory I deserve it. In defeat I need it.” One time, in a rush, he failed to make the stop. He was on his way to, well…Waterloo.

Fast forward to the mid-to-late 1800s. Louis Pasteur discovered yeast cells. Fermentation became more than a “strange phenomenon” that exploded wine bottles. Wine making took off with newly applied knowledge. Stronger glass bottles, the invention of the wire muzzle and metal foil to hold down corks propelled Champagne’s future.

champagne leaves in early springtime, april 2015

A common consumer complaint was the unpleasant murkiness left inside bottles from dead yeast cells and other byproducts of fermentation. The discovery of disgorging this sediment became the crowning glory to Champagne fame.

Widow Clicquot [of Veuve Clicquot Champagne] and her cellar master experimented with trying to remove the sticky mess. He cut holes into the widow’s wooden kitchen table and inserted the bottles upside down, suspended by their necks. Periodic twisting and shaking dislodged the sludge and moved it gradually toward the cork. When the cork was pulled, sediment shot out leaving most of the wine and bubbles. Topped off, re-corked, and it was ready to ship. The secret leaked. An industry took off.

During WWII, most of France’s wine stock was hidden behind false walls to offset German demand for shipments home. Winston Churchill, a notorious Champagne consumer declared, “Remember Gentlemen, it is not just France we are fighting for, it’s Champagne!” His admiration for U.S. President Roosevelt was immortalized in this simile, “Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of Champagne; knowing him was like drinking it.”

undulating symmetry, post harvest, fall 2015

Post-war, vineyards not destroyed were massively re-organized. Numbers of vines were reduced. Replanting in symmetrically ordered rows, rather than haphazardly as in the past, became the norm. Grapes were matched to the soil and climate. The combination of ancient chalky soil, harsh northern weather, and unreliable harvests created a system for blending grapes from current and past years. All fine Champagne is now made from blending three grapes: Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Pinot Meunier. Exceptions are Blanc de Blancs which is 100% Chardonnay and Blanc de Noirs which is 100% Pinot Noir.

My love for Champagne came about later in life. In my 20s, California sparkling wine was the perfect storm for a day-after headache. During fifteen years of living in Asia we drank Champagne only once–on New Year’s Eve of the millennium. In Germany we sipped Sekt, the sparkling apéro-of-choice at social gatherings. But we never drank it at home. Only when we moved to France did bubbly wine shift from infrequent tasting to regular delight.

When we lived in Paris, Champagne was the only beverage served as an aperitif, day or night. It was light, refreshing, delicious, and trés French, of course. We began making weekend trips to Reims and Épernay, the co-capitals of Champagne region, to sample and learn more.

Some people consume Champagne only on special occasions–weddings, anniversaries, birthdays, retirements, christenings, or at midnight on December 31. We live outside of that box now. When at home in France, Champagne is often our daily white-wine-of-choice.

Pairing Champagne with food often surprises. Strawberries and chocolate are cliché. Pizza happens to be a perfect chemistry match. On homemade pizza night we begin by uncorking something to sip while we cook. Glasses are refilled table side when we sit down to eat.

Sparkling wine produced in other countries–German Sekt, Italian Prosecco, Spanish Cava, and California are runners-up to Champagne. They aren’t bad, just not the same. When you uncork a bottle of Champagne, for whatever occasion, raise your glass to Dom Pérignon, and enjoy “tasting the stars”.

My only regret in life is that I didn’t drink more Champagne. –John Keynes

I’m not planning to have that regret.

La Bonne Rentrée in Paris

September 18, 2015April 7, 2023 / wendyulfers / 20 Comments

August is the month when France goes on vacation. In the early 1900s, “La Fermeture Annuelle” was a tradition to provide paid time-off to factory workers. By 1982, laws were passed giving five weeks of paid vacation to all salaried workers.

From late July to the end of August, Paris is quieter, the streets emptier, parking–not a problem. There are still tourists and some businesses remain open. But most small shops and restaurants are closed and shuttered as Parisians head for beaches, country homes, and relaxation elsewhere.

Then comes September and “La Bonne Rentrée”. Schools reopen and summertime is officially over. By the end of the first week of la rentrée, streets and cafés are full again. Curbside parking disappears for another year.

La Rentrée is a time to reconnect with friends, re-establish routines and reacquaint to life in Paris.

One of my favorite returning rituals is to spend a morning at the “Marché aux Puces” at Porte de Vanves. This isn’t the biggest flea market or even the most famous one in Paris. The mega-flea market at Clignancourt, on the northern edge of the city, is where scenes from the movie “Midnight in Paris” were filmed.

I like the smaller venue in the southern 14th Arrondissement. It lines only two streets for half a day on Saturdays and Sundays, year round. There are professional merchants with covered tables and reserved spots. There are others who sell from a blanket spread on the ground. It’s treasure hunting and people watching fun. The crowd is both local and tourist.

When looking for something special, like an antique enamel coffeepot for a story about Swedish egg coffee An Egg in the Coffeepot, I headed to the flea market. At other times, without a particular goal, I have stumbled upon useful items such as porcelain towel bars or heavy glass candleholders or Japanese-occupation pottery plates which we collected in Taiwanese street markets twenty years ago.

japanese-occupation pottery, circa 1895-1945, made in taiwan

Sometimes an excursion is rewarded with a beautiful signed vase or a framed picture for the wall. And sometimes–nothing at all.

Flea markets are recycled decorating or collecting at its best. The volume and range of objects astounds. Even knowing the adage “one man’s trash is another’s treasure”, it’s hard not to be judgmental of some objects on display for sale. Odd, quirky, eccentric, useful, cheap, expensive, collectible, colorful, playful, beautiful, strange, or simply weird. It’s all there for a price. Bargaining is essential, bien sûr.

I go to the Marché aux Puces for entertainment, to see what’s there, to eavesdrop on interactions between shoppers and vendors, to stroll along and muse over oddities with a cup of coffee or vin chaud [in wintertime] from the corner kiosk.

The adventure never disappoints. It’s an annual ritual that reminds me that I’m back home in my favorite city in the world.

Letting Go In Latvia

August 17, 2015April 7, 2023 / wendyulfers / 26 Comments

Joseph Campbell, mythologist and philosopher, wrote,

A ritual is an enactment of a myth. And, by participating in the ritual, you are participating in the myth…But you don’t know what you are doing unless you think about it. That’s what ritual does. It gives you an occasion to realize what you are doing so that you’re participating in the energy of life. That’s what rituals are for; you do things with intention…you learn about yourself as part of the being of the world…

Campbell also said,

Mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical…it is beyond images. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known, but not told.

Herein lies the challenge–to tell a story that for the past two months has been beyond the reach of my words. It is rooted in a ritual with pagan origins. It was part of the wedding of our son and his Latvian/Russian bride.

In a countryside setting outside of Riga, Latvia, June 12 was as perfect as a summer day can be anywhere in the world. There was warm sun and a light breeze. Cloudless sky. Lapis-blue lake and a field of soft grass. A ceremonial framework of boughs entwined with flowers. Shared vows in Russian and English. Radiant smiles. Applause, joy, and love.

The after party began with a scavenger hunt and Champagne for guests as the newlyweds were whisked away for photos. Upon their return, the celebration continued with good food and drink, fantastic music, poignant toasts and funny speeches.

Just before midnight, the band music stopped. All of the guests were ushered from the party tent, down the hill, to the wedding site near the lake. Glowing candle lanterns lit the darkness. Blankets were offered for the cool evening air. There was a young man playing soft guitar music. Two chairs had been placed beneath the framework of boughs and flowers. The mothers of the bride and groom were instructed to sit on the chairs. Then our children sat on our laps. No one understood what was happening, but we were entering an ancient Latvian myth.

Mičošana [pronounced “Michuashana”] is a Latvian wedding tradition that dates back to [pre-religious] pagan times. It symbolizes the moment when the bride becomes a wife and the groom a husband. It is a way of saying “goodbye” to childhood and home. In this enactment, there was an unspoken tribute to both mothers as we held our children one final time before they passed into adulthood and the creation of a new family. It is a sweet, sad, and somehow romantic experience.

Historically, Latvia was a country of peasants living and working on large farming estates under a feudal system. Girls typically married boys from settlements far away. Mičošana became a ritual of farewell. After marriage, the bride would live on her husband’s settlement, rarely seeing her own family again. The ceremony symbolized “giving the bride away” because it severed ties between the girl and her family.

Here is how it went 21st century style. Midnight–the end of the day and the beginning of a new day. With soft background music and married children on our laps, the bride’s mother took off her daughter’s veil and placed it into a box. She tied a ruffled apron around her daughter’s waist.

I placed an engraved wooden pipe in my son’s hand. The bride and groom stood together with their symbolic accessories and read aloud the roles they would now assume. This was the lighthearted version of contemporary Mičošana, with laughter too. Choosing from a basket of printed cards the bride read, “I will drink beer and be the master of the remote control.” The groom, “I will always be very pretty and sweet.”

The readings went on for several minutes. The bouquet was tossed by the bride as the guitar music faded. People began to drift uphill to the tent where the party continued until the sun rose. But something very special had happened. I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t have words to describe it. I only knew how it made me feel. And I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Walking across the grassy field, the bride’s mother and I linked arms. She turned to me and said softly in her rudimentary English, “Wendy, when babies come, 50/50, okay?” I wrapped my arm around her shoulders and said, “Of course, Tanya. 50/50. Always.” It was another unexpected moment. Her overture touched me. The meaning behind the words was heartfelt and real. First women, then mothers, and now a multi-cultural family bound by our children.

As I learned more about Mičošana, the symbolism became clearer. Our son and his wife have assumed roles in an international marriage. It will take our daughter-in-law far from her Latvian family home. She will undoubtedly see her parents and family less and less often. The bittersweet midnight ceremony was the same parting experienced by generations of brides over thousands of years.

I believe Campbell. Myths are important. Rituals are important. Poetry is important. Symbolism runs through ceremonies from ancient times to the present. Because of our thinking nature, we strive to understand the meanings underneath. This helps awaken us to our place in the circle of life.

Campbell’s words, again: “…by participating in the ritual [with intention]…you are being put into accord with the wisdom of the psyche, which is the wisdom inherent with you anyhow. Your consciousness is being reminded of the wisdom of your own life.”

This is what we hope for all of our children. We wish for them to grow into the wisdom of their own lives.

001295050018_1 (1) — ajutimestwo, 6-12-15

SOLYANKA [pronounced Sahlahnka] aka HANGOVER SOUP

Partying continues well into the day after a Russian/Latvian wedding. A thick hearty soup of salty, cured meats and sausages is usually on the menu after a night of drinking. It hits the spot with its rich meaty stock, briny pickles and vegetables, garnished with sour cream. Although there is a vegetarian form, meat solyanka is more common. I fell hard for this delicious taste at Jumurda Manor. Anna and I made a version in her London kitchen. The key is a lot of sour and salt in a rich broth. Ingredient proportions are flexible. Rice can be substituted for potatoes. This is an “everything but the kitchen sink” kind of soup. It tastes so much better than you think it will!

MAKING THE BROTH

300 gm lean beef rump
1 whole onion, peeled
4 bay leaves
1 T. whole peppercorns

In a saucepan, cover broth ingredients with water. Boil uncovered over medium heat for 30 minutes. Take out onion and discard. Continue boiling until the meat is cooked through, about 1.5-2 hours. Add additional water to keep meat covered and to build up broth. When meat is tender, take out to cool slightly. Skim fat off top of broth.

NEXT STEPS

200 gm Polish sausage
100 gm good German ham

Cut cooled beef, sausage and ham into julienne strips. Cube some potato. Place in broth to simmer.

Chop ½ onion and sauté in olive oil. Add julienned carrots and ¼ cup [or more] tomato paste. Continue sautéing for a few minutes then add all of this to stock.

Place sliced meat in skillet to warm slightly. Then add to stock.

IMG_4439 (1) — brine soaked cukes and olives

IMPORTANT FINAL INGREDIENTS

Jar of cucumbers in BRINE. Different from regular pickles. Saltier. Brinier. See photo.
Black olives packed in BRINE

Stir in julienned cucumbers, whole black olives and ¼ to ½ cup [or more] of the brine.

When potatoes are cooked, turn off heat. Salt and pepper to taste.

Slice fresh lemons into circles and place over top of soup. Cover pot and let sit about 30 minutes. Remove lemons. Serve garnished with a large dollop of fresh sour cream.

Delicious and nutritious even without the hangover.

Secret Eating

June 29, 2015June 4, 2025 / wendyulfers / 14 Comments

Secret eating is seldom spoken about or easily admitted. If you ask most people what they enjoy eating alone, without sharing, they hesitate with a questioning look. Or mumble that they don’t know. It’s possible they’ve never experienced this solitary pleasure.

The desire to eat unobserved isn’t like bingeing on ice cream or sneaking candy bars to feed your chocolate craving. It’s not comfort food either. It is something you do surreptitiously, consciously, and quietly by yourself. It is a moment, by choice, of indescribable satisfaction.

A survey of extended family members about clandestine eating revealed only one answer close to my definition. It came from my daughter-in-law who is Latvian with Russian heritage. She formed a covert eating ritual as a child, from the age of ten. In the summertime, after her parents left for the evening, she went to the market by herself. She bought a huge watermelon with pennies saved or found under chair cushions. Lugging it home, she managed to cut it in two, carried half to the living room sofa, watched television, and ate it down to the rind. Spoonful by decadent spoonful. Including the seeds. She was not under the watchful eye of anyone, or told to get a plate, or to sit on the floor, or not make a mess. She did it quietly and happily, for her own pleasure.

M.F.K. Fisher [1908-1992] wrote a wonderful story about secret eating. It took place one frigid winter when she and her husband lived in an unheated walkup apartment in Strasbourg, France. They were depressed by the unending cold, dreary grayness and couldn’t afford to move. So they rented a room in a pension for one luxurious week. It came with a big bed, billowy curtained windows and heat.

Each morning after waving Al off to the university, Mary Frances sat in the window considering the day ahead. She wasn’t ready to brave the outdoor temperatures. While the maid fluffed up duvets and pillows, murmuring in her Alsatian accent, Fisher carefully peeled several small tangerines. Meticulously separating each orange crescent and removing all the white “strings” between hi pieces, she placed the sections on top of newspaper over the radiator. And forgot about them.

There was a long lunch when Al returned and perhaps a wee nip of “digestif” from the decanter on the dresser before he went back to afternoon classes. By this time the orange sections had majestically puffed up, ready to burst with heat and fullness. Opening the window, she carefully placed them in the snow on the outside sill. Several chilling minutes passed. Then it was time.

For the rest of the afternoon, Mary Frances sat watching the world go by on the street below, savoring each orange morsel slowly and voluptuously. She reveled in the spurt of cold pulp and juice after biting through the crackling skin that was like …”a little shell, thin as one layer of enamel on a Chinese bowl”. She mused while vendors sold half-frozen flowers, children ran home from school, and prostitutes sipped hot tea in a café across the way.

Winter’s early darkness descended and the orange sections were gone. She couldn’t exactly say what was so magical about them. Yet she knew that others with “secret eatings of their own” would somehow understand.

I read this story many years before we moved to Europe. The first winter we lived in Germany, I traveled by myself to Strasbourg on a train from Frankfurt. Next to Place Gutenberg is a small hotel where I stayed in a room under the roof. The spire of the Strasbourg Cathedral was visible when I stuck my head out the dormer window. The bathroom was at the top of an open staircase right under the peak.

chambre-mansarde — my room under the roof

hotel-gutenberg-3 — cathedral view from window by night

That February was bitterly cold.

I bought a bag of small clementines, peeled them into sections, and laid them on a piece of hotel stationery on top of the radiator. Then I went out to explore.

When I returned, the oranges had grown fat and hot just as Fisher described. There was no snow, but the outside temperature was below freezing. Out on the sill they went. When thoroughly chilled, I ate them one by one in the dim afternoon light. It was true–the skins were crisp and crackling. So thin that, when you bit through them, there was a “pop” followed by the rush of cool juice and pulp. It was a replay moment from the pages of a story by a writer I had long admired. It made me happy.

Several years later, a new secret eating ritual started during a visit with “Dietitian Daughter” in Colorado. She was buying a snack item for her husband from the bulk bins of a national food chain. I watched her fill a bag with flattened, dull-colored, brownish-orange pieces of fruit. They looked run over by a truck. They were unsweetened dried mangos. Dehydrated into stiffened leather. She handed me a piece and said, “Try it”.

The first sensation was what it looked like–rough, tough hard-edged, with the taste and texture of dust on shoes. As salivary juices kicked in, that road-kill-looking mango became softer, warmer, and pliable. Careful considerate chewing brought out interesting changes. It turned vaguely sweeter but held onto the essence of fruity leather. I had to chew slowly, without hurrying, before it was ready to swallow. I had to pay attention.

The degree of subtlety from dry dusty toughness to a satisfying payoff several minutes later completely hooked me. I took my own bag back to Paris.

Now when I feel the urge, I go to the hiding place in the kitchen and randomly choose several pieces of dried mango. Then I stand or sit in a window of our apartment overlooking the vine-laden courtyard where I never tire of the view.

If I stand in the kitchen window during secret eating time, I might muse over the spring unfolding of the Virginia creeper vines or the work-in-progress renovations on the apartment across the courtyard. The neighbour’s cat might be outside on the balcony chirping wistfully at pigeons. If I choose to sit in the warm afternoon sun of the dining room windows, I have a private view of sky, rooftops, vine covered brick walls, and my own blooming geraniums.

Or, I might decide to stand in the street-side windows at the front of the apartment where I take note of pedestrians, shopkeepers, or a trumpet-playing street musician four stories below.

My secret eating is something I try to keep to myself. It gives me great pleasure and satisfaction. But what is it really? Like Fisher, I can’t exactly say. Perhaps it’s simply a meditative time-out, or a few private minutes of simply “being” and not “doing”, or a satisfying break in the midst of a day, a week, a month.

There must be someone out there who understands what I mean…

The Baba au Rhum Affair

May 12, 2015September 21, 2025 / wendyulfers / 14 Comments

When dining in a French restaurant, there are three typical dessert categories people choose. There are the crème brûlée lovers or the mousse au chocolat lovers. There are fruitarians who crave tarte tartin or other fruity things.

When I watch people eating these classic desserts I can live vicariously with a mental spoonful. But mostly I remain distant from their “ordinary desires”. That’s because of a short-lived, but passionate, affair with Baba au Rhum.

It began casually, with an innocent introduction. We skipped over flirtation as things rapidly accelerated to a lusty peak, then slid rather quickly into unmet expectations. Inevitably, it dwindled to a wistful end. Such is the cycle of most affairs. Even with desserts.

A series of events led to this infatuation. For two months I worked as an assistant to a French woman who conducted cooking classes for tourists in her apartment in Paris. She was between student “stagiaires” during a busy season so I volunteered to fill in. Lessons began at 9:00AM with a walking tour through a well-known market street, followed by preparation in her professional kitchen. It ended with a three-course luncheon. My job was to pay the vendors, schlep purchased food items home, prep and clean up while clients chopped, stirred, watched and listened. As they nibbled on regional cheeses and sipped white wine around the large kitchen work-island, I set the dining table, refilled glasses, and washed dirty dishes and utensils.

“Payment” for my services was mostly in the form of laughable anecdotes. Once, a 500 gm block of unwrapped butter fell to the floor and was stepped on by the teaching chef herself, who slid, but caught herself by grabbing the counter. I was told to, “clean it” because it was “still usable”. I wiped the smashed butter with a lot of paper towels until only a small sliver remained. Then pushed it to the back of the countertop.

As a thank-you for my brief tenure, I was invited by madame to lunch in a small, classic restaurant off the Boulevard St. Germain. My hostess ordered dessert for both of us. And, with this unexpected introduction, I met my French love.

In front of me was placed a shallow white bowl containing a cylindrical piece of spongy cake, a side dish of smoothly whipped fresh cream, and an open bottle of Martinique rum.

Rum was slowly and generously poured over the cake. I took a spoonful of rum-infused cake with a little cream and–well, it was like sharing a magic carpet ride with “Ali Baba” himself.

take a spoonful of rum infused cake and cream

Here is the curious part. I don’t drink rum or even think about it–ever. I shun plain squishy cake as unnecessary calories. Whipped cream is so “dairy” and off my nutritional list. But the sum of the parts turned into obsession. Lusty Caribbean rum plus airy booze-drenched cake mingled with cool, vanilla flecked cream. All of which dissipated into a cloud of vaporous desire in my mouth. I was hooked at first bite.

Thus began my infatuation with Baba au Rhum. It wasn’t perfect. There were ups and downs. I rejected restaurants that did not offer the rum bottle tableside, or served pre-fab, stale, even crunchy cake. Quelle horreur! I knew what I wanted. Expectations were extremely high from the beginning.

split open, ready for rum, cream on the side

After months of reckless indulgence I made a profound discovery. It was the beginning of the end. The best Baba au Rhum I ever had was not in Paris.

During one fall season we took a road trip to the countryside of Bordeaux. We stayed in a charming guest cottage near the town of St. Emilion. It was in the middle of the vineyards of the Troplong Mondot winery. Having arrived after the harvest, the vines were empty and the fields quiet. The weather was cold and wet. We had an open-hearth fireplace in the living room that burned twisted grape vines and three foot logs. One evening we dined in the upscale restaurant of the winery’s Château. The menu was fixed. Dessert was Baba au Rhum. I was thrilled with anticipation.

our cottage in the Troplong Mondot vineyard

Baba was served in the usual trilogy with one notable exception. The cake was lightly warmed. It was a variation that enhanced the coolness of the cream and the velvety smoothness of the rum. I knew this was the best it had ever been and might ever be.

Intense relationships often run their course. So it was with Baba and me. After Bordeaux, I tried it a few more times but it was never quite the same. Finally, it faded into a wistful memory. Now when I see Baba on the menu there is a flutter of recognition. I question whether to dabble again. Certain that my expectations won’t be met, I look the other way.

I enjoy telling friends and guests about Baba au Rhum’s charms, urging them to give it a try. It seems to fall into the love/hate category. Maybe it’s too extreme, too unusual, too far removed from mainstream desires like chocolate, crème brûlée, or fruit tarts.

And yet, I remain nostalgic because that delicious combination of sweet rum coolness, savored and shared, is a fine way to spend time around the table with people you love.

Transcendent Picnics

April 14, 2015May 8, 2025 / wendyulfers / 19 Comments

qiagtiangangcloudy — trail to buffalo meadows, taipei, taiwan

There is more than the communion of bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk. –m.f.k. fisher

M.F.K. Fisher [1908-1992] wrote that the best outdoor eating is on the side of a hill in the early evening. Her story of an unforgettable picnic took place in Switzerland in the 1930s. Sixty years later, in the 1990s, on a grassy meadow in Taiwan, we had a similar family experience. Continents and decades apart, the stories are interwoven because both Fisher’s memory and mine are reflections about more than the menu.

Fisher’s story went like this. She and her husband were building a small house above Lake Geneva, Switzerland, on a steep hillside surrounded by vineyards. Her parents came from California to visit. Late afternoon sun in June promised just enough warmth for an outside meal. The four of them carried baskets to the construction site, after workers had left for the day.

A table under the apple tree was covered with a checkered cloth and set with silver, ceramic plates and cloth napkins. Bottles of wine were placed in an ancient spring-fed fountain to chill. A fire was built, ringed with stones and roofing tiles, fueled with wood shavings.

The first spring peas were ready to harvest. As the men picked from the terraced garden uphill, Mary Frances ran baskets downhill to her mother who quickly shelled them into a pot. An iron casserole was set over the open fire where the peas “cooked for perhaps four or five minutes, swirling them in butter and their own steam”. Salt and pepper at the end, then table side.

On each plate lay a small roasted pullet. There was salad of delicate mountain lettuces, a basket of good bread, and fountain-chilled white wine generously poured. And those tender young peas–freshly steamed and seasoned! They shared the harvested feast and each other’s company as the surrounding hills turned rosy and the sun began to sink. Suddenly, in a neighboring field, “…a cow moved her head among the meadow flowers and shook her bell in a slow, melodious rhythm, a kind of hymn.” Fisher never forgot it.

In the spring of our first year in Taiwan, we went on a picnic where the alignment of people, place, and food replicated Fisher’s kind of perfection. More importantly, our young daughter began to understand the communal spirit created when food is shared in good company.

Yangmingshan is the national park north of Taipei. It was typically crowded on weekends with cooped up city people seeking fresh air, hiking trails, flowers and greenery. Friends Maddy and Cabby knew of an area in the park where water buffalo grazed freely and people were few. They organized a picnic in Buffalo Meadows on a late afternoon. We were four adults and three young children.

From the parking area we hiked uphill in a cloud so dense it moistened our hair and skin with droplets of water. At the top of the trail the landscape turned sunny and green with views all around. The soft grass was picnic perfect. Out of a backpack came a Frisbee and the men organized play on the hillside. Lara and Liza tired of running after a frisbee they couldn’t catch. They tried to follow a slow moving water buffalo. He wandered on.

Our nine-year-old daughter came over and sat down to watch the food preparation. There was a small camp stove along with a battered and blackened Japanese wok in which to put together the meal. Ingredients had been sliced, steamed, grated and pre-cooked at home. Once the stove was leveled, primed, and producing enough heat, assembly began.

Olive oil was generously poured into the wok and heated. Thinly sliced cloves of fresh garlic were added to the hot oil. Shaking the pan continuously, the slices began to brown around the edges. Bite sized broccoli flowerets were stirred in with freshly ground pepper. Pre-cooked penne pasta was added along with butter. Everything was tumbled together with a large wooden spoon until thoroughly heated. Finally, freshly grated Parmesan cheese was layered on top and melted into everything. Lightly browned garlic slices gave toasted sweetness to the broccoli and pasta. A one-dish meal. Perfect.

Plates were passed. We sat side by side on blankets eating, laughing and talking. As the sun lowered over the far hills, the temperature cooled and we reached for jackets. Thimble sized portions of single malt whisky were passed among the adults. A breeze stirred and we leaned in closer, wrapping arms around children. Four-year-old Liza was zipped into the front of her father’s grey sweatshirt where she fell asleep curled into his chest, only the top of her blonde head showing. We talked quietly as darkness descended. The mist returned. It was time to go home.

Days later, our daughter asked if I could make that broccoli pasta. She had a faraway look in her eyes while she spoke of the picnic in Buffalo Meadows and how wonderful it had been. Looking at her face and listening to her speak I knew she had made a connection about more than the food. She was asking to go back to a feeling created on a tranquil hillside with close-knit family and friends. I never forgot her request. She had connected the dots that Fisher writes about so well–the communion of spirits when food and love are shared, around a table or on a hillside, with people who are important to us.

Perhaps this explains why a picnic, so many years ago, is vivid in my memory. Although I love reflecting on Fisher’s story of peas, a Swiss hillside, and a cowbell, my own recollection is this–a beat-up Japanese wok filled with steaming broccoli pasta, a grassy meadow, adults and children with arms around one another, and a water buffalo.

BROCCOLI GARLIC PENNE [from Silver Palate Cookbook]

Ingredients:

1 lb. [500 gm] penne pasta, cooked al dente
2 heads broccoli, cleaned and cut into small flowerets
½ C. extra virgin olive oil
10 [or more] cloves garlic, thinly sliced crosswise
Freshly ground pepper
4 T. [1/2 stick] good butter
Freshly grated fresh Parmesan cheese

Assembly:

Boil penne, drain, rinse under cold water.
Simmer broccoli in boiling water 1-2 minutes, drain, rinse in cold water.
Heat oil ~ 1 min. Add garlic slices and cook, shaking pan until it begins to brown ~1 min.
Add broccoli, stir, grind pepper on top.
Add butter and penne, stirring continuously until well mixed and heated through.
Sprinkle with freshly grated Parmesan cheese.
Serve immediately.
Pass the pepper mill.
Add garnish and extra Parmesan.

For variety, add shredded or cubed cooked chicken, sliced black olives, or leftover veggies. Red or yellow bell peppers make a colorful addition. [Steam or stir fry before adding.] Red pepper flakes for added spice. Cherry tomatoes, cut in half, as garnish before serving.

Mussel Memory in Brussels

March 17, 2015May 8, 2025 / wendyulfers / 11 Comments

Hotel de Ville on the Grand Place, Brussels, Belgium

Brussels is an important city for several reasons. Politically, it is the capital of Belgium and the European Union. Historically, it’s importance as a fortress town began in the 10^th century. Architecturally, the Grand Place central square is designated a World Heritage Site of striking 17^th century design and construction.

For me, the importance of Brussels is tied to memories of food I ate there while visiting a friend years ago. Now that we lived next door to Belgium, in France, it was time to revisit. We took a road trip from Paris.

In 2002, when I was living in Taiwan, my friend Nancy invited me to Brussels. She had moved there from Taipei several years before. The guest room was on the top floor of their multi-level row house. The ceiling angled sharply from the peaked roof. An over-sized skylight opened to fresh air and rooftop views. Wooden floorboards were painted white. On the bed was a puffy duvet of green and white gingham. The adjoining bathroom housed a big, white bathtub and thick towels warmed on a radiator.

I called it the Heidi-hayloft-room because it reminded me of the children’s book about the little Swiss girl who slept in a hayloft. I had flown from Asia into a fairytale.

A four-year-old boy who believed he was Batman lived in the household. It was impossible to separate costume and character from the child. So his parents lived with a masked, black-caped superhero. At pre-school, Brady acquired a perfect French accent. And, like everyone else in Brussels, he loved pommes frites.

Frites are a national snack food in Belgium. Locals and tourists eat them like popcorn at the movies. Storefronts sell paper cones filled with them. A range of sauces is offered to go on top. Each order is freshly made and just right–crispy on the outside, feathery on the inside. I believe Belgians perfected frites because they know that eating them outside on a freezing day warms you on the inside. We shared a cornet on bitingly cold February days. And stayed warm to our bones.

cornet with a dollop of spicy samourai sauce

While Nancy and I walked around the Grand Place during my visit, she said, “You must eat this. Right now.” I was handed a waffle wrapped in crisp paper from a street vendor’s cart. On the outside it looked like any waffle, except it was thicker through the middle and more irregular around the edge.

Then I bit into a surprise. Partially melted, caramelized sugar crystals crunched and then dissolved into syrup. My mouth filled with warm sweetness. Time, place, and taste blended into one moment. A winter morning on a cobblestoned square with gothic spires and a hot waffle. I never forgot it.

My food-writing mentor, M.F.K. Fisher, had a similar experience. As a young woman living in France, in the 1920s, she hiked with an Alpine club. Most of the members were much older. She was the only foreigner. On a very cold day, while catching her breath at the top of a steep hill, an old general said, “Here! Try some of this young lady!” He gave her a pale brown piece of chocolate.

“In my mouth the chocolate broke at first like gravel into many separate, disagreeable bits. I began to wonder if I could swallow them. Then they grew soft and melted voluptuously into a warm stream down my throat.” –m.f.k. fisher

Another hiker said, “Wait, wait! Never eat chocolate without bread, young lady!”

“And in two minutes my mouth was full of fresh bread and melting chocolate, and as we sat gingerly, the three of us, on the frozen hill, looking down into the valley…we peered shyly and silently at each other and smiled and chewed at one of the most satisfying things I have ever eaten…” –m.f.k. fisher

MFK’s hillside bread and chocolate. My perfect waffle. Fisher calls them “peaks of gastronomic emotion”. Still, moments like these are personal and hard to describe.

In 2015, waffle vendors were no longer allowed in the Grand Place. Off the square, many shops sold waffles loaded with extras. It wasn’t what I wanted.

On a side street, I spotted a parked truck painted with “Gaufres Chaudes”. A man was making waffles in his van. What he handed me was smaller and not as dense as I remembered. On the inside there was a thin layer of molten sweetness but no crunch of sugar crystals turning into syrup. The taste was fine. I was hungry. It was cold. But it wasn’t the same.

The best food revisit turned out to be mussels. “Moules-frites” because they always come with fries. Nancy had introduced me to Aux Armes de Bruxelles. My husband and I found the restaurant and ate there three times over three days. There was no reason to go elsewhere. It’s that special. Belgians get their mussel fix there too.

September to April is the season for jumbo mussels from Zeeland, a southwestern province in the Netherlands. It is the only region from where to obtain this particular type of mussel. So our server said. Other mussels, and those eaten throughout the year, are not the same. Smaller. Different. Not as tasty.

They were served in a big bowl, frites on the side, and always bread to sop up the sauce and veggies at the bottom. It was trial and error to choose a favorite sauce. My husband found his on the first try–white wine and cream sauce [au vin blanc et crème]. I asked for a made-up combination that became my favorite–white wine, lots of garlic and red pepper [au vin blanc, beaucoup d’ail, et piment]. It’s not on the menu but the kitchen obliged.

The broth is full of chopped onion, celery, fresh parsley, and once, tiny asparagus tips. It is an intoxicating combination–a bowl of jumbo Zeeland mussels, steamed heat and aroma from the sauce wafting up, crisp fries on the side. We smiled and sipped wine between morsels of mussel and bites of frites.

The best accompanying beverage required more trial and error. Belgian beer was good for the beer drinker. A glass of Bordeaux was good for the red wine lover. But the unanimous favorite was sharing a bottle of Chablis from Burgundy. Begin sipping while you wait for the moules-frites to arrive.

Mussel memory in Brussels will always be one of my food highlights. Sharing the adventure with a loved one means we both understand what a “Fisher moment” of gastronomic perfection smells, tastes, and feels like.

“...Everything is right. Nothing jars. There is a kind of harmony, with every sensation and emotion melted into one chord of well-being.” –mfk fisher

Fisher describes it better than anyone. Mussels in Brussels. C’est tellement très bon.

Aux Armes de Bruxelles
Rue des bouchers 13
1000 Brussels
Tel: +32 [0] 2 511 55 50
http://www.auxarmesdebruxelles.com

Comfort Food for Cal

February 24, 2015June 17, 2026 / wendyulfers / 9 Comments

My father was the fourth of six children, but the only boy. His oldest sister, Bess, made him an uncle for the first time when he was ten years old. That nephew is my oldest cousin Cal, who turns 84 this month. He doesn’t see so well anymore, yet still spends several hours a day at his law practice, serving clients he continues to outlive. His wife of more than 60 years, Joan, is one of my favorite people. She says that Cal has never been motivated by food or by his appetites.

Shortly after my first story was published Joan wrote, “I am actually doing a bit of cooking. Going out to eat has lost some of its charm. My efforts are very basic, as Cal doesn’t like anything fancy. He enjoys canned baked beans on buttered white bread. I use the vegetarian beans, but he thinks they are ‘pork’. His favorite dish from his mother is creamed tuna and peas on saltine crackers. I prefer my tuna and peas on toast points, thank you. As you can see, the bar is not high. We look forward to new ideas from you.”

I have never eaten creamed tuna and canned peas on crackers, toast points or anything. But Cal’s preferences started me thinking about the notion of comfort food.

Comfort food: n. food that is simply prepared, enjoyable to eat, and makes one feel better emotionally. [Collins English Dictionary, HarperCollins Publishers]

There is no single explanation for how our food preferences arise or change over the years. Yet the taste of certain food is tied to our experiences and emotions. Thoughts of home, family, love, hate, sickness, allergic reactions, holidays, sadness or happiness can trigger a taste memory of longing or loathing.

Cal is a true comfort food creature, formed by his mother’s cooking, honed by childhood likes that matured into adult preferences. His eating experiences are defined by U.S. Midwest geography and by the cuisine of a certain generation.

For example, he is obsessed with Jell-O. Jell-O filled with crushed pineapple and nuts or Jell-O filled with strawberries, bananas and nuts. At Christmastime something special–Jell-O with cream cheese rolled into balls and covered in nuts. This is meant to look like studded snow balls floating in a colored pond. Trying to visualize this, I’m certain I couldn’t eat it.

He also loves sweets. Chocolate pudding, cupcakes, or butter cookies like Aunt Bess used to make. Joan wrote, “Tapioca pudding is his favorite dessert. His mother made it from scratch, separating the eggs, beating the whites stiff, and folding them in after it had cooled somewhat. I make this from scratch when I see pigs fly by the window. Now he enjoys a simpler pudding.”

In similar Midwest fashion, I was raised on meat, potatoes, and mushy canned vegetables boiled before serving. So many childhood meals spent spitting vegetables into a paper napkin and hoping not to get caught.

My food preferences began to cut a wider swath in adulthood when we moved overseas to Singapore in the 1980s. Spices and chilies in ethnic cuisine from India, Malaysia, Thailand, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Singapore happily reformed my taste buds and palate.

Life became a tasting/eating adventure in Asia. I sweated my way through outdoor food stalls in heat and humidity plus the spices in whatever I was eating. It changed my definition of comfort food forever.

As Joan and I compared Cal’s food likes and dislikes, other family food lore tumbled out. My father’s second sister was Dorothy [Aunt Dot] who suffered from a “nervous condition” consisting of some strange phobias. She outlived two husbands and never had children. She also wasn’t much of a cook. At family potluck gatherings, she always brought her “signature” Pork and Bean dish. It was prepared by opening several cans of baked beans that contained cubes of pork fat. She added raw onions, catsup and molasses. The casserole was baked in the oven until warm. The onions were always “crunchy”. Children refused to eat it.

Joan and I lost track of time, talking and laughing about family food foibles. Cal called to ask if she had forgotten about him and his lunch. She left and later sent an email, “Cal is such a Prussian! The trains must run on time even if they have nowhere to go. However, upon seeing the glorious cupcakes you sent home to him, he was easily placated.”

You have to love a man who softens when sweets are offered.

I surveyed other family members and friends for their comfort foods. Choices ran the usual gamut of American food tastes–cheese, pizza, ice cream, popcorn, chocolate, nothing unusual. Friends from other cultures and my Latvian daughter-in-law offered more variety in their comfort food desires.

It was our friend Alec [who is part comedian] that gave the most graphic descriptor:

“My comfort IS food. I love to have my mouth FULL. A bite that causes the cheeks to protrude like two small Buddha bellies is a sign of bliss. I am comforted by eating with my hands…likely linked to Neanderthal kin who subdued dinner with their bare hands. There is nothing more satisfying than having a chokehold on a stuffed burrito or pinning the buns of a burger into submission before taking an oversized bite. Wrestling with my food gives both the victor [me] and the vanquished a sense of exhausted satisfaction, after the battle.”

My cousin Cal and I will never share the same food preferences. Nor should we. The important thing is that Cal and I are connected by the way our comfort food choices make us feel–enjoyably nourished, emotionally content, and loved.

Two recipes for opposing tastes, one sweet and bland and one well seasoned.

CAL’S TAPIOCA PUDDING

1/3 c. granulated white sugar
3 T. minute tapioca
2 ¾ C. milk
1 egg beaten
1 t. vanilla extract

Mix first 4 ingredients in saucepan and let sit 5 minutes. Cook on medium heat. Stir constantly until it reaches a full boil. Remove from heat. Stir in vanilla. Cool 20 minutes and stir. Makes 4 servings. Eat warm or cold. Top with seasonal fruit if desired.

WENDY’S SPICY EGGS-ON-RICE

1 serving leftover rice, any flavor, placed in a bowl. Easiest rice cooking recipe: making-perfect-rice
Sauté 1 minced shallot in butter until softened. Add red pepper flakes or fresh chilis [optional].
Add 1 or 2 eggs sunny side up to shallots. Turn over easy. Sprinkle with S & P.
Slide eggs and butter from cooking on top of rice bowl. With spatula or knife cut into eggs so yolk melts into rice.
Garnish copiously with chopped tomatoes.
Eat with a spoon.
Optional garnish: equal parts chopped garlic and ginger browned in olive oil.

For a less spicy version, leave out red pepper flakes, garlic, and ginger. Just eggs on rice. Very nice.

cal and wendy’s grandfather’s feed store, now a retail store in kirkwood, missouri

A Mountain Gem for 70 Years

February 5, 2015April 7, 2023 / wendyulfers / 15 Comments

Allenspark, Colorado lies in a curvy bend off Highway 7, between Estes Park and the valley below. It is situated within the Roosevelt National Forest and surrounded by mountains of the Front Range Colorado Rockies. As you drive past the majestic scenery of Wild Basin and the backside of Long’s Peak, it would be easy to bypass the business spur and keep descending the mountain.

But if you do make the right hand turn into Allenspark, it’s probably because you know about an historic hillside landmark halfway through town–Meadow Mountain Cafe.

On the outside, it is painted green with purple trim. There is always a line up of cars parked below. An assortment of buttons are mixed into the cement and stone steps that you climb to the front porch.

Inside, the main room has original knotty pine walls and a working potbelly stove for heat. Hand colored photographs by a local artist are displayed for sale.

An eccentric collection of salt-and-pepper shakers line the walls.

Behind this quirky façade, there is a long history of food and relationships that began in 1946, with a local character named Lil Lavicka.

Lil was known as the “pie lady”. As part of a divorce settlement her husband hastily built a small two-room cafe where she could sell her baked goods. On this hilly spot, in tiny Allenspark, her pie house flourished for twenty summer seasons. It was just a stone’s throw across the street from a small house where she lived into her 90’s.

Several changes of ownership and some 30 years later, Lil’s place was renamed Meadow Mountain Cafe. The menu became daily breakfast and lunch fare. Food was fresh and home-cooked to order, the coffee was hot and had a hint of cinnamon. Consistently delicious food, friendly servers and reasonable pricing enhanced its reputation within the small community and radiated beyond. Locals and tourists began lining up for a table inside, or on the covered porch with hummingbird feeders, flowers and an overhanging pine tree. Lil’s seasonal pie house evolved into an Allenspark landmark with regularly returning customers, who eventually became friends.

Roxanne [Rocky] St. John began waiting tables at Meadow Mountain in the late 1970s. Almost right away she was moved into the kitchen and continued to work the grill after two other women purchased it in the 1980s. Rocky finally took over solo ownership in 2007. It was time to put her personal stamp on the place.

Rocky is responsible for introducing the veggie burger and the incredible green chili sauce for huevos rancheros. Both became specialties of the house. Cinnamon spiked coffee remains standard, of course.

She chose the current paint colors, including easy-on-the-eye peach walls in the kitchen and built the button inlaid steps for safer access in all weather conditions. The funky array of coffee mugs and salt-and-pepper shakers were always part of her style. The music that blasts from the kitchen is pure country western or rock-n-roll oldies. Son Joe mans the grill, daughter Alicia works the front, and husband, Dan, does whatever needs doing. It’s a full family operation, year round, with added help in summer. On Tuesdays, they take one day of rest.

We have been driving from our cabin in Estes Park to Meadow Mountain Cafe for more than 15 years. I go by myself, with family, or with friends, usually for breakfast, sometimes lunch. It never disappoints. It’s not meant to be fast food.

You wait patiently and sip good coffee, talk leisurely. Perhaps you warm your back sitting at the counter by the antique stove, muse over the salt-and-pepper collection, read a book, or eavesdrop quietly on another conversation. You watch regulars walk into the kitchen looking for Rocky and to say hello. A table of friends play cards in the corner after their meal. At the other counter, a man leans his chin into one hand, and dozes, holding his coffee cup with the other.

Orders parade out of the kitchen. Coffee mugs are refilled. Homemade brown bread is sliced thickly for toast or sandwiches. Summer requires twice-a-day baking to keep up with demand. The scene is homey and multi-dimensional–from the diversity of people stepping through the front door to the din of kitchen music, mingled conversations and laughter, and the clatter of clearing plates as another table empties and fills. It always feels just right. You are glad to be hungry and in Allenspark.

What sustains 70 years of successful continuity in a community of just over 500 people? Rocky, and the female owners before her, perfected a simple yet timeless formula. Starting with an old-fashioned hard work ethic, they stay passionate about what they do and consistently do it very well. Quality is always high, service friendly, and customer relationships strong. And then, just maybe, a little hint of cinnamon in the coffee doesn’t hurt either.

I hope you have your own gem of a hometown cafe–a place with honest food, ambience, and feeling of community–where you go to be nurtured over and over again.

St. Catherine of Siena Chapel [Chapel on the Rock], St. Malo Conference Center along Hwy 7, Allenspark, CO

More Than Just an Egg Sandwich

January 12, 2015August 25, 2023 / wendyulfers / 20 Comments

In Colorado, this holiday season was snow-white and the fireplace blazed night and day. There were deer and elk on the hillside, daily hikes into the National Park, a miniature snow-woman laboriously constructed from barely packable “dry” snow, and, of course, there were egg sandwiches.

A multi-layered, made-to-order egg sandwich is staple breakfast fare when we are at home in the mountains. It is nourishment spiced with geography and longstanding tradition. The ritual evolved, as things often do, from something I read.

When we lived in Singapore I was immersed in the writings of M.F.K. [Mary Frances Kennedy] Fisher. She weaves autobiographical stories of people, places, and food into descriptive prose. The mythology of her story about “Aunt Gwen’s” fried egg sandwiches caught my imagination. It is the tale of a child’s realization that food and life lessons can be inseparable from a strong adult mentor.

When Fisher was a young girl, several influential summers were spent with Aunt Gwen in Laguna Beach, California. As Mary Frances explained,

“…she taught us a thousand things too intangible to report, as well as how to roast kelp leaves, steam mussels, tease a rattlesnake away from a frightened horse, skin an eel after sundown, and stay quiet while a night-blooming cereus [cactus flower] unfolds…”

With Aunt Gwen leading the way, Mary Frances and her younger sister Anne hiked the hills and cliffs above the beach singing hymns and marching songs at the top of their lungs. There was always an egg sandwich or two carefully tucked into their pockets.

2672883-IMG_2844 — the hills above laguna beach, california

In the good Laguna days, it was an exciting promise, to warm up the pan, ready the ingredients, and make fried-egg sandwiches. Aunt Gwen insisted that we have at least two pockets somewhere on us, one for shells, stones, small fish, or lizards, and one big enough to hold these greasily wrapped, limp, steamy monsters. Then we would race the sunset to a high hill. The sandwiches stayed warm against our bodies, and when we panted to a stop, and fell against a good rock or an old eucalyptus trunk, the packets sent out damp insistent invitations… We each had two sandwiches. The first we gnashed at like fairly well mannered puppies. The second was for contemplation, as we watched all of the quiet empty slopes down to the cliff edge, and the great ocean with the sun sliding into it. —MFK Fisher, Among Friends, Alfred A. Knopf Inc. 1970

Cliffs-Sunset_edited-2-620x437 — sunset at laguna

What I love about this story is that it is about satisfaction beyond physical hunger. Fisher was learning, as a child, that the right combination of food, company, and spiritual nourishment was a metaphor for living well. The ingredients of those egg sandwiches included “equal parts of hunger and happiness”, a hillside sunset, and companions she loved.

There are no cliffs overlooking an ocean where our cabin is located, but cool summer mornings and cold winter ones stimulate good appetites. Mountain views, towering ponderosa pines and native wildlife are our spiritual geography. When home in Colorado, family and friends are often with us. A tradition was born around the kitchen table in winter and the front porch in summer—our mountain version of the fried egg sandwich.

Aunt Gwen’s recipe was well documented by Fisher. It started by heating the grease from whatever was cooked the day before in a large flat-bottomed skillet. When the fragrant drippings reached a smoking hot temperature, an egg was dropped in, the yolk broken, and quickly fried so that the edges were crisply brown and barely digestible. Next, two slices of good bread were added to the pan and browned on one side only. The cooked egg was slapped into the middle of the bread slices and pressed together. Finally, the whole thing was wrapped in wax paper that partially melted into the sandwich, small pieces of which were consumed when bit into with hunger and a happy heart.

As an aid to digestion and modern taste preferences, this is our version.

ROCKY MOUNTAIN EGG SANDWICH

basic ingredients, before adding options

Ingredients [physical]

Thick sliced smoked bacon, cooked crisply
Eggs, preferably brown and free range
Jalapeño jack cheese or cheese of choice
Toasted English muffins or good brown bread
Salsa or fresh tomato slices
Fresh spinach or some kind of leafy green
Avocado slices or guacamole, optional
Salt and pepper to taste
Additional red pepper flakes as desired

Ingredients [spiritual]

Family and/or friends gathered on a sun-warmed front porch in summer, around the kitchen table or fireplace in winter. Laughter and conversation flowing easily with a cooked-to-order egg sandwich in hand. Appetites satisfied. Camaraderie shared. A new day begins.

Method

Assemble ingredients. Cook bacon in well-seasoned cast iron skillet. Using the bacon drippings, crack an egg into round metal form and break the yolk. Season with S&P or red pepper flakes. When egg is set, remove the form and gently turn the egg over for just a few seconds. On toasted English muffin, layer a thin slice of cheese, tomato, bacon and optional ingredients [avocado, salsa, etc.]. Add cooked egg and fresh spinach leaves or other greens. Press the whole thing down to a manageable biting size. Eat immediately while hot, using both hands. A mug of strong coffee or tea is good accompaniment.

break the yolk, season with red pepper if desired

All I could now say about Aunt Gwen will never be said, but it is sure that much of my enjoyment of the art of living, as well as of eating, comes from her…as well as my certainty that the two are, or can be, synonymous. —M.F.K. Fisher, Among Friends

Kindle Some Candlelight

December 18, 2014August 25, 2023 / wendyulfers / 26 Comments

Growing up in a family with regular fire-making rituals, I inherited an obsession with flames. When the outside temperature dropped, it was time to place newspaper, kindling, and wood in the fireplace and watch it burn. Now I live in an historic Parisian apartment with seven stone and marble fireplaces. All of them sealed shut. In the dark winter months there is only one thing to do. Between four and five in the afternoon, as the sun is setting, I begin lighting candles.

Recently, I became aware this is not a tradition others follow as consistently as I do. On a dark December afternoon, my friend Lesli invited a group of women to her apartment in Paris for “wine and unwind” time. This is a time of bringing friends into your home, opening a bottle of something, and letting conversation flow.

Lesli’s apartment is furnished with a spectacular crystal chandelier from another century. While admiringly it, I noticed it was outfitted with candles! They had never been lit since Lesli moved in three years before. She needed little encouragement from me. I climbed on a chair, broke off the old wicks and re-lit them. In full glow, this antique beauty became a Versailles-worthy show stopper.

Her apartment also had six or eight candles in heavy glass jars from the oldest candle making store in Paris. Cire Trudon is the most prestigious French wax manufacturer in existence since 1643. The wicks were deeply buried in hardened wax. It took some digging and trimming, but those, too, were put into burning use. Soon the living room was alight with candle glow, “coupes de champagne” in everyone’s hand, and easy banter among friends.

Candlelight warms up any room and the atmosphere immediately turns festive and ambient. Some people believe candles are messy and never use them except on special occasions. As requested by a few friends in France, here is basic candle etiquette to keep your home aglow anytime.

Always trim the wick before relighting a candle. It will break off in your fingers at the perfect starting point. Otherwise, smoke from a too-long wick blackens walls, ceilings and pollutes the room.
Prevent excessive dripping messes by keeping lit candles out of drafts. This seems obvious. Also for safety reasons.
If you light a lot of candles, it’s good to use a candlesnuffer for extinguishing rather than blowing them out. This reduces smoke pollution and prevents spraying wax on walls and surfaces.

When engaging in regular candle usage, there are other interesting tips to know.

Never display new taper or column candles in your home with white, unburnt wicks. If you leave wicks un-blackened they look like the store display, not something your actually use for home ambience and decoration. White wicks can be lit briefly and extinguished, unless using the candle right away. Votive candles are an exception. Light them when ready to use.

Don’t burn candles during daylight. Candles are for darkness only, morning or evening. Breakfast or coffee before sun-up with candlelight is a mellow way to start the day. Evening is natural timing. A candle-lit bath is self-care luxury. The long days of summer are for being outside so save candle rituals for the hibernating months.

When a drippy mess occurs, as it will, consider it part of the experience. A plastic spatula gently scrapes wax from hard surfaces. Hot water on a washrag does the rest, melting it away.

One way to prolong the life of column candles is to gently press around the outside rim as it is burning, folding the soft wax in toward the wick. This will help the rim melt into the wax pool and keep it level. If the wax pool becomes too deep, pour the liquid out right after extinguishing. Occasionally trim the hollowed out part of the candle to make it flush with the wick using a cutting board and a large knife. The candle is shorter, but it will burn better.

best of electricity and candlepower, colorado

I can’t explain how fire and candle lore became second nature to me. But I do know our “indoor lives” are enhanced by strategic candlelight. It’s a personal, creative choice for the selection of candle holders, shapes, and colors. Almost any non-flammable container will hold some type of candle. Oil lamp candlelight is a no fuss no muss option, except for needing to occasionally replenish the oil. The rule of thumb is buy good candles, not the least expensive ones. You get better candle power return with the investment.

So on these dark days and long nights of winter, kindle a candle, or two, or three at home on a regular basis. Enjoy some flickering flames with family or friends. After all, ‘tis the season.

Premier candles: www.ciretrudon.com

Cire Trudon USA, Inc. 358 Fifth Ave., Suite 901 NY, NY 10001

In France: 78, rue de Seine 75006 Paris

Taiwan Green-Marble Pesto

November 29, 2014August 26, 2024 / wendyulfers / 9 Comments

Our family lived in Taipei, Taiwan for twelve years, from 1993-2005. If you look for symbolism in numbers like I do, it was a complete 12-year cycle of the Chinese Zodiac calendar. Twelve Chinese New Years celebrated traditionally with red envelopes and NT [New Taiwan] dollars, deafening strings of firecrackers, and an annual assortment of snacks from the market on Dihua Jie.

lara and friends, dihua jie, early 2000s

dihua jie market, every chinese new year

In our Tien Mu neighborhood, we ate in local restaurants that served delicious and always freshly made Chinese food. You signed off on ambience while dining out for taste. Formica tables, plastic stools, plates and bowls, disposable chopsticks with splintery ends, napkins like toilet paper, and strong fluorescent lighting–all standard dining décor. It was a good way to get the eating chore done, which we did often in favorite haunts. It was the opposite of cozy.

Desire bred creativity so we found another way of eating with excellent menus in ambient surroundings. Familiar friends around a candlelit table set with china or pottery plates, gleaming silverware and tall stemmed wine glasses became an almost-every-weekend event. It was regular “dining-out” that happened to be in each other’s homes.

Sourcing ingredients was an adventure in foraging. There was one grocery store with more than two aisles, which we fondly referred to as “Two L Wellcome”, as that was the spelling. Otherwise, there were tiny mom-and-pop shops where the nuances of supply, demand, and restocking necessitated flexible planning.

tien mu grocer, of the mom and pop variety

There were several men among our group of friends who enjoyed preparing party meals. One of them was Alec. He inspired my husband to start cooking. Our own dinner parties became more elaborate over the years. Fortunately, Mark adopted Alec’s kitchen-to-table results rather than his in-kitchen “bull in a china shop” methodology.

It’s a fact that Alec operates on a high metabolism. He prowls the kitchen after midnight to down a bowl [or two] of cereal for hunger and insomnia in the wee hours. He bikes up mountains and through forests, he jogs, he talks quickly, and moves fast always. He makes us laugh when he pours coffee into his shirt pocket instead of his mouth or re-arranges pictures by knocking them off the wall. Luckily for his wife, he is the designated chef for their family by mutual choice. He nurtures both family and friends with home-cooked recipes.

Alec not only cooks and bakes, but makes jams and condiments, too. For several years, he brewed fruity varieties of brandied liqueur and tried to persuade us to love them. There were annual gifts of syrupy sweet alcohol and floating fruit. Our appreciation never ripened. We finally had to tell him we didn’t know what to do with the growing collection of unopened bottles.

Sometimes Alec and Mark teamed up for a special celebratory dinner in our home. We had a good-sized kitchen, but I learned to stay out of it during prep time. Unpleasant noises mixed with exclamations of “Oh no!” were normal. Things shattered on the floor and crunched underfoot when Alec was present. Our kitchen table accumulated a series of distressing gouges and missing wedges of wood. By the time we left Taiwan, it was designated firewood. Guests were blissfully unaware of what went on behind the scenes and completely charmed by the three-course meal.

alec and mark prepping dinner, late 1990s

When Alec is wrestling with ingredients in any kitchen, mishaps happen. The first dinner party in their Taipei apartment foreshadowed the future doom of our table. We just didn’t know it at the time.

Six or eight of us were chatting amiably around the dining table while Alec’s final preparations were underway behind the swinging kitchen door. A loud metallic crash was followed by a muffled wail. Conversation stopped. We peeked into the kitchen. Splayed like a fan on the green marble floor was an enormous spilled kettle of spaghetti and basil pesto. It was a vivid image of green and white on green and white, with a touch of barely suppressed laughter. Using the well-known 10-second rule, there was hurried scooping, wiping and reheating. Flustered nervous systems settled. Tableside, we murmured gratefully over the best pesto pasta that ever shined a Taiwanese Hualien-marble floor.

miami+marble+floor+restoration — Hualien marble floor, made in Taiwan

My favorite recipe of Alec’s, and the most memorable, is this homemade pesto. Served immediately over hot pasta, it is a garlicky, basil-y, olive oil-y sensation. Each time we were invited to dinner I secretly hoped it was on the menu.

There are several advantages to making your own pesto. It’s easy and versatile and can be frozen if made in big batches. Aside from pasta, it can be stuffed into chicken breasts, spread on sandwiches, used as a dip, or an alternative base sauce for homemade pizza.

It’s up to the cook whether to use it to polish the kitchen floor.

ALEC’S GREEN-MARBLE PESTO

2 C. tightly packed fresh basil leaves
6 large cloves garlic
¾ C. extra virgin olive oil
1 C. freshly grated parmesan cheese
½ C. pine nuts or walnuts [or both]
¼ to ½ tsp. salt and pepper [start light and adjust upward]
red pepper flakes [optional] for those who need some heat

Blend ingredients in food processor until smooth. Taste and adjust S&P. Dilute with a bit of hot water to mix easily with prepared pasta. Delicious on it’s own or add cooked chicken, sun dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, black olives, or cherry tomatoes.

Recipe is sufficient for up to two pounds [1000 gm] of pasta. Adjust pesto amount to your taste. I tend to go on the lighter side when adding other ingredients. Store any extra in airtight container under a thin film of oil.

I have also made pesto à la Alice Waters [Chez Panisse] using only a mortar and pestle. This is a labor of love, and meditation, with a uniquely wonderful result. For pesto purists. Or those without food processors.

prepared for food processor or mortar and pestle: oil, garlic, pine nuts, basil, parmesan

out of food processor—the color of green marble

dilute with hot water before adding pasta

garnish with chopped tomatoes and parmesan

Eternal+Spring+Shrine — taroko gorge, taiwan, source of hualien marble

Hellenic Halloumi

November 16, 2014August 21, 2023 / wendyulfers / 23 Comments

For three years, in the early 1990s, we lived on the island of Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. The capital, Nicosia, was divided in half by the Turkish invasion of 1974. After the conflict, U.N. troops kept peace along a border called The Green Line. This line divided the entire island between the Turkish occupied northern section and the Greek populated land to the south. We lived on the Greek Cypriot side of Nicosia. Although you could still see bullet holes in certain places, the old part of the city was very charming—vine covered walls, stone terraced tavernas, shops of pottery, pewter, and hand made lace, narrow cobbled lanes with flowers spilling out of pots.

We lived on the ground floor of a small apartment building adjacent to the International School of Cyprus [ISC], as it was called in those years. The kitchen and living room had glass doors that opened onto a large terrazzo-tiled terrace bordered by a white iron railing. It was overhung with willow branches from an enormous tree growing out of the garden of the Greek restaurant on the hillside just below.

In warm weather, sounds of clinking glassware and cutlery drifted upward as tables were set for dinner on the patio. We befriended the owner and sometimes he beckoned us to join him for a late night glass of wine. When the last diners departed, we tiptoed down the stone stairs between our terrace and his restaurant to have a drink and conversation under candle lanterns in the willow tree.

I met Janmarie during our first year in Cyprus. Her four children attended ISC. After dropping them off in the morning, she was at my kitchen table for coffee by 8:30AM. Every day. We became good friends over those visits, talking easily about many things.

Sometimes morning coffee conversations merged into lunchtime hunger. When this happened, particularly in the wintertime, Janmarie would say, “Let’s go for some Halloumi.” We headed downtown to the old part of the city.

Halloumi is a cheese that originated in Cyprus centuries ago. Traditionally it came from sheep’s milk, is pure white, shaped in semi-solid blocks and packed in salty brine. Once relieved of it’s packaging and drained, it looks anemic and unappetizing. The subtlety of this cheese is that it transforms into something special by grilling it to a golden color.

sealed in brine

before transformation

On the streets of old-town Nicosia, hot off the grill, layered on Panini bread with tomato and cucumber slices, then grilled again in a sandwich press, halloumi was more than a hand held snack. It was the taste of salt from the sea mixed with creamy chewiness and warmth, in sharp contrast to the cold air in which we sat.

On a wintery day in a Cypriot taverna, that sandwich reminded me of ancient history beneath the cobblestones–9000 years of island invasions and conquerors, Greek mythology, Roman ruins, and archeological digs. In our own time, it was a reminder of spring picnics in fields of red poppies, smooth-stoned beaches, and tile-roofed houses of old stone overlooking the sea. All told, grilled halloumi is the remembrance of a specific time and place, nourishing food, and my friend.

fbf24c61c3c60bb74e8827160c2a4db7 — Kourion Roman Amphitheater used for ISC graduation

stone-circle-500x500 — stones on Pissouri beach

When we lived in Cyprus, halloumi was a local product only, made and consumed on the island. Later, we lived in Taiwan, Germany and France and halloumi was forgotten.

Then one day, in a Greek delicatessen on our Parisian market street, I spied bricks of that briny cheese. The global market had caught up. Taste and memory were about to be rekindled.

There are different ways to prepare and enjoy halloumi. The easiest way is to slice it ¼ inch thick and fry in a little bit of good olive oil. When nicely browned on both sides, it is the start of a great sandwich using pita bread or a tortilla wrap. Layer in tomatoes, cucumbers, red onions, spinach or leafy lettuce.

add spinach, tomatoes, cucumbers, red onion

As a snack or hors d’oeuvre, halloumi can be prepared a little differently. Cut into cubes and brown on all sides in a small amount of olive oil. When golden, place in a bowl, drizzle with a bit more oil and sprinkle with red pepper flakes. Pass out the toothpicks and eat it right away. You can make tapas with olives and fresh crudités, or enjoy the salty creaminess on its own.

Although I can eat halloumi cheese anywhere in the world these days, I cherish most these three things–a Mediterranean island steeped in ancient history, the camaraderie of a great friend, and a hot-off-the-grill halloumi sandwich on a cold winter day.

nicosia

cyprus

at the taverna

My Market Street, Paris

October 27, 2014May 8, 2025 / wendyulfers / 29 Comments

When our son made his first trip to Paris in 2008, he wryly observed that the city seems to be founded on the notion to stop, have a drink, and talk with someone every 50-100 feet. Café culture is built into centuries of French history. Within almost any radius of where you stop walking in this city, a sit-down-and-take-a-break opportunity presents itself. Locals always have a favorite café in their neighborhood or “quartier”. Here, you take a load off your feet, eat, drink, talk, muse, or hang out. It’s easily some of the best entertainment around.

When I told a French neighbor in our apartment building about my ritual at a favorite café on our market street, she nodded and said I had established my “poste d’observation”. Now that’s what I tell my husband when he calls wondering where I am. I’m involved in an activity of great importance–assessing the cast of characters who walk by my table. Sometimes he hurries to join me.

Of course, there are market streets all over Paris—open markets, covered markets, farmers’ markets, daily markets, bi-weekly markets, organic markets. The most important is the one nearest to where you live.

I venture to our market street in late afternoon to find something delicious for the evening meal. If, by chance, there is an empty table at my café, I take it as a sign that I must sit down for a moment or two. In the season of warm weather, I count 11 businesses with sidewalk tables on this narrow street. For my musing and entertainment, I have pledged allegiance to only this one. It’s on the corner where all the action begins.

There is a children’s book by Arnold Lobel called On Market Street. It tells the story of a little boy enticed by shopping on a particular street. He buys everything from A to Z, then trudges home carrying it all. That is my experience, too, because on this small pedestrian street is almost everything I want or need.

Butchers, bakers, patisseries, florists, cheese purveyors, books, jewelry, fruit and vegetable vendors, grocery stores, crepes, caviar, oysters, homemade pizza and pasta, middle eastern food, cafés and restaurants, coffee, tea and chocolate, wine, champagne and liquor, Italian and Greek delicatessens, candles, household decorations, a pharmacy and a dry cleaner.

Before opening my wallet for the day’s necessities, I settle into an empty chair at my “poste”. Greetings are exchanged with the server. I order a glass of wine. This varies by the season or time of day. On a warm day, Côtes de Provence rosé is standard. In cooler temperatures, a glass of Bordeaux feels cozier under the overhead heaters. Every beverage comes with a savory nibble on the side. Something salty and slightly stale. Homemade potato chips are the standard limp offerings. Sometimes a tiny glass of pretzels. It’s what I expect and is always perfect.

The tables on either side of mine are occupied. To the left, a couple moves seamlessly from kissing to smoking to drinking beer. To the right, two women of a certain age share a crepe sucré. One has coffee, the other sips beer. I give them only a brief glance because my gaze is focused on the cobbled path in front of me. This is where the rest of the world flows by.

Best times to be positioned at the “observation post” are late afternoon or early evening. Sunday morning is a perfect time to make important observations. The parade is constant. It requires full attention. And never disappoints.

Sometimes I’m absorbed by the range of footwear–spiky heels, stylish boots, flip-flops, sandals, platform shoes, sneakers, orthopaedic shoes, even chic Italian shoes on a man with crutches.

shopper’s chariot

Shoppers use rolling carts called “chariots” to hold and carry heavy purchases. They carry armfuls of baguettes.

Or they may be laden with flowers, wine, fresh produce, roasted chickens, oysters or prepared food from the “traiteurs”. On Sundays, a cacophony of sound permeates the air. Parisians are picking up ingredients for lunch at home “en famille”.

Vendors hawk produce, servers rattle glasses and silverware, babies cry, friends greet each other with kisses, dogs bark and fight, children laugh and run, bikes and scooters roll by, music plays. And always, people talk, talk, talk over everything.

The sweetest sights drifting by are small children and dogs, completely at home in the hubbub.

Sometimes I notice someone watching me watching them. The ritual is recognized. Smiles are exchanged. The parade glides by.

As the wine and stale chips dwindle, I move on to the shops and my own errands.

Trudging homeward with arms laden, I pass the chair I recently occupied. Someone else is sitting there–watching me as I walk by…

excerpt from On Market Street by Arnold Lobel, illustrations by Anita Lobel

“The merchants down on Market Street were opening their doors. I stepped along that Market Street, I stopped at all the stores. Such wonders there on Market Street! So much to catch my eye! I strolled the length of Market Street to see what I might buy…

My arms were full on Market Street, I could not carry more. As darkness fell on Market Street, my feet were tired and sore. But I was glad on Market Street, these coins I brought to spend, I spent them all on Market Street…

On presents for a friend.”

illustration by Anita Lobel from “On Market Street”

An Egg in the Coffeepot

October 4, 2014August 21, 2023 / wendyulfers / 12 Comments

“There is more than the communion of bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk.” These words, written long ago by M.F.K. Fisher [1908-1992], speak of the chemistry that occurs with the right combination of people, place and food–a communal spirit shared around the table with family or friends. Bread and wine are not the only catalysts. It can happen around a pot of egg coffee, too.

Three weeks ago we reconnected with a group of people we have known for many years but not seen in a long time. It was one of those bittersweet reunions–gathering to celebrate the life of a friend who passed away. And, at the same time, seeing others with whom we had shared great moments in the past. The weekend was one of those memory jolts when you re-encounter special friendships after losing touch with them. It’s easy to catch up because what you loved about them before is still there.

the stone farmhouse, courtesy of marilyn larson

For several years in early marriage, we made repeated visits to a stone farmhouse in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was the family home of Dale and Marilyn Larson. The house was thick walled with deep windowsills constructed from native fieldstone. Of all the warm memories of time spent on that beautiful farm, the clearest one is standing in the kitchen around an enamel coffeepot with a broken egg inside.

IMG_2345 (1) — flea market enamelware, paris

Legend has it that the recipe for egg coffee was carried on a boat from Sweden to the New World sometime during the 1800s. In Larson family lore, the story goes like this.

A young Swedish girl, named Edla, moved to southern Minnesota in the late 1880s. She was terribly homesick, often going into the fields late at night to have a little cry. Then, Karl Larson proposed marriage and a new life began on his farm. It was 1890. There was no more homesickness. And there was always a pot of egg coffee on the stove.

Two generations later, Edla’s grandson, five-year-old Dale Larson, walked across two farm fields to visit his grandparent’s home. To gain his mother’s permission for the trek, he had to hold the hand of his older sister. She was six-and-a-half. Upon entering the kitchen, Edla would say to them, “Milk is bad for you. Coffee is good. Drink this.” So he did. For the next 80 years.

Every time we visited the Michigan stone farmhouse we drank it, too. It was a morning ritual perfected over generations and fascinating to watch. Making egg coffee became the symbol for something else–time spent with people we admired and loved. And who loved us back. Important life lessons were absorbed over cups of egg coffee in those years.

During the memorial weekend for our mutual friend, an important message from the Larson kitchen returned. It’s this–spend time with people who bring out the best parts of you, the best version of you. Then remember to go back and get refreshed.

I tried making egg coffee each time we returned from those Ann Arbor visits. But it was never quite right. I was probably too impatient or easily lured by push button coffee making. Eventually the attempts stopped and the enamel pot became merely decorative.

These days I’m more patient about the sweet spot of perfecting a ritual. With an enamel coffee pot from the flea market and step-by-step practice, I can make a good cup of egg coffee now. And always within this ritual, I’m reminded of friendship and lessons learned first in a kitchen, in a field stone farmhouse, with a broken egg at the bottom of the coffeepot.

…And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things, the heart finds it morning and is refreshed.”–Kahlil Gibran, “On Friendship”

LARSON FAMILY EGG COFFEE

one egg, one coffeepot, coarse ground coffee, boiling water, and a chopstick

Determine how many cups [8oz] of coffee your pot makes. Break one egg into bottom of pot, with or without the shell.
Measure in coarse ground coffee–one heaping scoop for each cup plus one for the pot.

3. Stir mixture with chopstick to combine egg and coffee grounds. Pour boiling water over egg/coffee mix. Stir together with chopstick.

4. Place enamel pot over heat. When it starts to foam up and boil, turn off heat immediately. Watch closely so it doesn’t boil over.

5. Cover and let steep for 5 minutes. Then pour and enjoy. You can use a sieve to strain, but if you pour slowly it is not necessary.

Egg coffee is as good as it gets for those who love a strong, smooth, mellow brew. What happens is this: The egg congeals coarse coffee grounds into a clump and neutralizes acidity that makes coffee taste bitter. It also acts as a filter, because essential oils from the beans are in the finished beverage, rather than on a paper filter. More oils make better tasting coffee. If you throw the whole egg with shell in the pot, you probably get some added calcium benefits, too.

Edla Larson kept adding water to the same pot all day long. She was probably frugal with both eggs and coffee. I have used a second round of boiling water, but don’t go beyond that. Just start over.

Sipping Avocado Margs in Summer

September 4, 2014April 28, 2025 / wendyulfers / 17 Comments

Our United States home is in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. When not in our home overseas, we live in a cabin built on a hillside outside the town of Estes Park. The back of the cabin faces the Front Range of Rocky Mountain National Park–mountains towering 10-14,000 feet above sea level. We gaze at them from a deck in the summer or through picture windows near the fireplace in the winter.

There are no streetlights and the roads are unpaved. The landscape is native Ponderosa pines, wild grasses, sage shrubs, and wildflowers. The maintenance is digging up noxious weeds, raking fallen pinecones, cutting and splitting firewood. We built a campfire ring with rocks from the land and sit around it with stories and laughter or the silence of a starry night. This has been our home-away-from-overseas-home since 1991.

The summer season return begins with the first morning after we arrive. It’s early. The sun rises at 5:30AM. Coffee is started and we pull rocking chairs onto the deck. Mountains and clouds to the south and west are pink-tinged at first light. As the sun makes its’ way upward, the color shifts to yellowish gold. When it finally rises over the eastern ridge line, the sky turns robin’s egg and then lapis blue. Second cup of coffee, still in bathrobes, day begins.

There is a different way of living and “being” in the mountains. Time is simpler, less hurried, less structured. It’s not necessary to “do” much of anything for the first transitional days. We live casually in blue jeans, moccasins or hiking boots, cotton or flannel shirts, depending on the temperature.

We eat differently too. The thinner air and long days tempt us with food and drink that somehow belong in the high country. Hearty breakfasts of egg sandwiches [More Than Just an Egg Sandwich] are eaten on the sunny front porch. It fuels the day before stacking split logs of firewood or hiking into the National Park.

When it’s time for a break, there is a place downtown we like to go. Ed’s Cantina is a 30-year locally owned and operated Mexican restaurant. The sign on the side door says, “Get in Here”. Their logo: “Live Forever. Eat at Ed’s.” When we go there, Avocado Margaritas are what we find.

Dietitian Daughter, savvy in combining nutrition with great taste, showed us the way. We fell in love, one by one. It’s the reason we wind up at Ed’s on a warm summer afternoon.

For the nutritionally minded, avocados are one of the healthiest food choices around. They are a good source of mono-unsaturated fat, the desirable fat for lowering LDL [bad] cholesterol while raising HDL [good] cholesterol. Vitamins in avocados, E and C among them, are good for skin tone and texture. There is documentation for the avocado’s anti-inflammatory properties. Even in liquid form, avocados provide a nice range of health benefits!

We also eat a lot of avocados in easy-to-make, lime-y, homemade guacamole. Less is more with guacamole. Let the avocado shine with a light touch on ingredients. Use as a sandwich spread [breakfast egg sandwiches–yes!] or more traditionally as a dip with chips.

Keep your avo margs and guacamole as separate ventures, though. You can ingest too much of a good thing.

GUACAMOLE à la Colorado

2 [or more] ripe avocados
diced red onion [or shallot]
diced or pressed clove of garlic, optional
salt
pepper
juice of fresh lime

Cut around outside of avocado and separate the halves. Scoop the meat out of the rind with a spoon. Mash avocado in a bowl with a fork or potato masher. Add onion, garlic, S&P. Stir together. Squeeze in as much fresh lime juice as you like, to taste. Adjust seasonings.

Will keep in refrigerator without discoloration by covering with plastic wrap pressed down on top of guacamole, allowing no air space.

ED’S AVOCADO MARGARITA [AVO MARG by order]

½ ripe avocado
Jose Cuervo Silver Tequila
Agave syrup
Limeade [they say theirs is homemade, but frozen concentrate is fine]
Ice
Lime garnish

Into blender, scoop one half avocado, a shot or two of tequila, a generous squirt of agave syrup, an even more generous pour of limeade and lots of ice. Blend together on high setting. Serve in tall, salt rimmed glass, garnished with a slice of lime.

Best when sipped on Ed’s outdoor patio with the Big Thompson River rolling by.

Live forever at Ed’s…

You Say Jam, Nico Says Confiture

August 22, 2014June 17, 2026 / wendyulfers / 11 Comments

What to put on toast in the morning was not something I thought much about for most of my life. That is, until four years ago, when we moved to France. It is interesting how a nondescript food item can suddenly become an art form when you step outside your normal way of experiencing it.

Most jams and jellies in North America are found in the supermarket aisle alongside peanut butter or honey. They can be chosen by color, flavor or, in my case, if there was red fruit and seeds in it. One jar usually sat forgotten in the door of the refrigerator unless I remembered to pull it out. It had the status of something easily ignored and possibly moldy.

Within the first year after our move to Paris, I experienced a “jam epiphany”. Students in French language courses learn “la confiture” is something to spread on the breakfast baguette or to stir into plain yogurt for dessert. Outside of class the learning curve rises steeply when you discover that confiture in no way resembles Welch’s-fructose-sugar-product in a jar. Yes, it is packaged in jars, but there are shelves upon shelves dedicated to the myriad brands and flavors in every market or shop. Another difference is that you want to savor, remember, and talk about what the flavors taste like.

considering the options: la chambre aux confitures

While wandering about Paris, I discovered a small shop completely dedicated to “Les Confitures”. This specialty store, stocked floor to ceiling with out-of-this-world-jams, was not in my normal shopping district. Now I plan excursions across town to pick up a jar, or two, or three. I send visitors there to buy gifts to take home.

What is it about jam in France that turned my head around? For one thing, each jar tastes exactly like its name–-to the ingredient. You can close your eyes and identify the fruit from which it is made without looking at the label. The sweetness is not cloying and sugary, but subtle. The taste is pure, sweet, fragrant fruit in spreadable form.

Sometimes confiture tastes like flowers. At a breakfast buffet in a château hotel in Normandy, I zeroed in on an arrangement of seven jars in a perfect circle of color, each with it’s own long handled spoon. They had names like Violettes de Provence, Cerise Grillotes, Oranges Améres, Lait Confiture, and Roses Confit.

I tried four of them on the fresh bread being served. They were all exceptional. Those named after flowers tasted as you might imagine a violet or rose would taste. They had what looked like pieces of flower petals mixed into the jellied matter.

Lait Confiture is light caramel in color and taste. It is notable for a creamy texture that makes you want to close your eyes and hum. When my nephew visited us in Paris from the United States, I watched him quietly stir a spoonful of Beurre Lait Confiture into his coffee each morning.

I have written before of my love for Normandy French butter imbedded with crystals of sea salt; how I spread it daily over toasted pieces of grainy baguette. On the weekends, breakfast has a different routine. My husband and I share a leisurely petit déjeuner in the small eating area overlooking the vine-covered courtyard of our apartment building.

He starts the coffee and begins making a plate of toasted pieces of baguette. Sometimes we have the crusty round bread from Poilâne bakery. On the round marble-topped table goes a clean cloth. From the refrigerator comes a special pottery container filled with confiture transferred from its original jar to this one. The flavor is whatever is on hand: mango, fig, strawberry/rhubarb, wild blueberry, pear, or simply “fruits rouges”—red fruits.

Weekend breakfasts are when we indulge pleasurably—when there is time to sit and read, or converse quietly, without rushing out the door. It’s a sweet formula we have come to love.

I learned something new about enjoying fine confiture from a young French boy. Nico, ten-years-old, lives in Strasbourg, and stayed overnight with us one weekend.

His mother and I were chatting when he arrived at the table to have breakfast. I served him a small wedge of Spanish omelet and two pieces of baguette toast. While our conversation continued, I was distracted by Nico’s approach to his food.

He looked into each of the two open jars of confiture and smiled to himself. Next, he scooped a generous amount of strawberry/rhubarb jam onto a piece of toast. With patience and precision he pressed the fruit of the confiture into the larger holes of the baguette, using the back of a spoon.

Then he smoothed the entire surface, back and forth, back and forth, for about three minutes until it was evenly and completely covered out to the edges. Not one millimeter of bread showed through the jam. It looked beautiful. Like a rosy still life painting. Once satisfied, he began to eat. For Nico, nothing was more important than preparing his toast and confiture, just so.

It reminded me of a story M.F.K. Fisher [1908-1992] wrote about Lucullus, a gourmand from ancient Roman times. He had a reputation for hosting lavish, elaborate banquets. But a solo dining experience was just as important to him.

Once, when served a meal where “he was conscious of a certain slackness” in the food, he became annoyed. When the summoned chef protested, “We thought there was no need to prepare a fine banquet for my lord alone…”, Lucullus responded icily, “It is precisely when I am alone that you pay special attention. At such times, you must remember, Lucullus dines with Lucullus.”

At my kitchen table, Nico was dining with Nico. With full attention and pleasure.

We stopped talking and watched as the second piece of toast was readied. With no less concentration, each meticulous step was repeated–smilingly scooping out jam, pressing it in, painting long strokes from edge to edge. His mother asked him what he was enjoying more, his toast or his confiture.

There was no need to answer. Nico’s contentment was visible from his smile down to the bottom of his little boy soul.

In Paris:

La Chambre aux Confitures
Specialty Epicerie
9, rue des Martyrs, 75009

www.lachambreauxconfitures.com

IMG_0798 - Version 2 — jars lined up for taste testing

Two Non-Cooks Saved by the Brazilians

July 29, 2014June 17, 2026 / wendyulfers / 7 Comments

Screen Shot 2014-07-26 at 2.33.50 PM — World Cup Final 2014: Germany 7, Brazil 1

There has been plenty of press about Brazil lately. Their national depression over losses in the recent World Cup barely registered with me. Reported problems readying venues for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro seem a minor glitch. These things usually work themselves out. Even if, at the deadline, there is little hot water in the hotels, as Sochi 2014. The Games must go on!

My interest in Brazil comes not from sports. It begins with a recipe that solved my first-dinner-party-dilemma when we lived in Singapore. An overseas friend recently reminded me of this. She was there, and it saved her too.

Mary was present in my life in the first three of our five international settings. We met in Singapore as part of a group of friends and families who celebrated Thanksgiving and went on beach holidays together. Then, in Cyprus in the early 1990s we became better friends. She lived in the apartment above ours in Nicosia and was our son’s third grade teacher at ISC, International School of Cyprus.

When Mary wanted to make a plan with me, an empty coffee can was lowered from her balcony, above our terrace, on a piece of string. When I saw a tin can swaying in the breeze, I knew there would be a folded piece of paper inside with a note: “Meet after school for a brisk walk” or “Come up for a wee dram of scotch”. Often it was both. Later, in Taiwan, we were part of a group of women who bonded in weekly TGIF afternoons in each other’s homes, on Friday, at the end of the work week. Our “Wine and Unwind” parties solved most of the world’s problems during those years.

adam and mary, International School Cyprus, 1991

During our first year in Singapore we accepted many invitations to dinners, parties, and holiday events. By the second year, we were past due in repaying friends for their kindness. At the time, I barely cooked and had nothing dinner party worthy in my repertoire. I consulted cookbooks and fretted about what to make.

For the family I stuck to one-dish meals, everything mixed together without the fuss of separate courses. In planning a party, I took M.F.K. Fisher’s advice to heart. She said an in-home dinner party is best when served to no more than six invited guests. Since that required several weekend party paybacks, I needed a menu that was repeatable, too.

Singapore is awash in fresh seafood and world-class cuisine. The spicy mix of Chinese, Indian and Malaysian food cultures always made eating out an adventure. In the late 1980s, we frequently dined at a seaside restaurant on Punggol Point. The specialty was chili crab that made our lips and faces sting. It was served with thick white bread to mop up the sauce. No one stopped eating until the table was a littered mess of shells, claws and sauce. We ate with our hands, wearing a paper bib. When finished, chili sauce covered both hands, went up the arms, and was smeared across cheeks and chin. Hoses were conveniently available.

20140421_203018 — singaporean chili crab

Screen Shot 2014-07-23 at 9.13.15 PM — peranakan place, earlier days

The other Singaporean dish I fell for was Nonya Laksa. This is from the Peranakan culture, a combination of Chinese and Malaysian cuisine. It’s a coconut curry-based soup with noodles, vegetables, prawns, and hardboiled quail’s eggs. I lost my taste buds to the heat of spices in this soup and never looked back. A walk from our apartment down Emerald Hill Road to the restaurant at Peranakan Place on Orchard Road is where I learned to eat this national treasure. It’s a double whammy to sweat from the heat and humidity of tropical temperatures while sweating from spicy food in an un-air-conditioned cafe. We adapted. And loved it all.

image (2) — nyonya laksa, courtesy of fiona foxon

It was a different friend who solved the dinner party menu dilemma. Knowing that I needed simple and foolproof, she suggested Brazilian Shrimp Stew–a one-dish wonder. Finding fresh shrimp and produce was easy. Cooking everything all together in a large pan, even easier. A portion of rice for any size appetite with shrimp stew swimming over the top seemed like a hostess’ dream. Easy preparation, plenty of time for socializing with guests and a repeatable result, I couldn’t ask for more.

Mary and her husband were invited to one of the dinners. Like me, she was [and is] uninspired by daily cooking. This easy-to-make stew not only caught her attention with its spicy coconut shrimp tastiness, she carried it forward to her own in-house entertaining. Mary reminded me of eating shrimp stew first under our roof, then making it her own success story.

We both thank the Brazilians for saving two non-cooks from dinner party angst many years ago.

Preparing and enjoying Shrimp Stew is for everyone who loves Brazil, her fanatic football fans, and the simplicity of a guest-worthy one-dish meal. Just add dessert.

Bon appétit.

BRAZILIAN SHRIMP STEW

1 kg [2.2 lbs] peeled shrimp
1/4 C. olive oil
1/4 C. chili oil
4-5 large fresh tomatoes, diced, or 1 large can diced tomatoes [do not drain or seed tomatoes]
1 large onion, chopped [or a combination of red and white onion]
1 large green, yellow or orange bell pepper, chopped [or all three]
3 T. parsley [fresh is best, cut with scissors]
6-7 crushed garlic cloves [or more]
fresh red or green hot peppers, chopped and seeded [optional, or to taste]
1 t. salt
¼ t. pepper
½ can unsweetened coconut milk [or the whole can because what else will you do with the rest?]

Heat oils. Add all ingredients except coconut milk. Cook 10-15 minutes. Remove from heat. Add coconut milk. Serve over rice.

Use chopped green onions and fresh lime wedges as garnish. Squeeze fresh lime juice over the stew, table side. Serve with good bread to soak up the sauce.

In Mary’s words: “I have made this recipe many times. Since you don’t specify how many it feeds, I just add more of everything if it doesn’t look like enough.” Spoken like a true non-cook who adapts.

I made this recipe amount recently and it easily serves six people.

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THE HILL WE CLIMB by Amanda Gorman

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