Silence Dogood was reading the “Review” section of The Wall Street Journal with more than her usual enthusiasm. She’d discovered a review of the world’s most disgusting foods, and was determined to share them with our friend Ben, doubtless on the (correct) assumption that there would be no requests for breakfast forthcoming after the dramatic reading.

The review was actually an excerpt of a book on the nature of disgust (That’s Disgusting: Unraveling the Mysteries of Repulsion by Rachel Herz, Norton, 2012). And the excerpt focused on fermented foods, since they tend to be regional, locally beloved but greeted by outsiders with everything from astonishment through horror to outright nausea.

Ms. Herz had come up with some stellar examples, too: A Sardinian cheese that’s eaten while still crawling with thousands of maggots (if the maggots have died, the cheese is considered too rotten to be safe to eat). An Icelandic shark that’s killed, gutted, and buried in a sand-covered pit to decompose for two to five months, then cut in strips and dried. Natto, a popular Japanese breakfast food that she describes as “a stringy, sticky, slimy, chunky fermented soybean dish… [that] smells like the marriage of ammonia and a tire fire.” She mentions others in passing, including gravlax (fermented raw salmon), chorizo (fermented, cured uncooked pork sausage), kimchee (Korea’s sauerkraut equivalent), and, of course, fried grasshoppers. (She refrained from adding those other popular delicacies, grubs, ants, and ant eggs to the list.)

Smell, taste and texture typically combine to make us back away from fermented foods, which are really just foods that have rotted to a specific point under the action of specific microorganisms that give them their characteristic odor, taste, and appearance. They are, in our friend Ben’s opinion, always an acquired taste, but one that is culturally encouraged from an early age. Take sauerkraut, which is eaten with relish all over this part of Pennsylvania, which was settled principally by Germans. Having never encountered this traditional Pennsylvania Dutch delicacy while growing up in the South, our friend Ben and Silence have still never been able to get close enough to it to try it. Phew!!!

And then there’s cheese. Our friend Ben’s prankster uncle actually caused a sibling’s visiting friend to pass out by sneaking up behind him and shoving a piece of Limburger cheese under his nose. (Or so family legend goes.) As a child, I learned to love the extremely sharp, flaky, pale gold Cheddar my grandfather loved to eat with sliced apples because I loved my grandfather, not because I was drawn to the pungent smell of the cheese.

And what about all those ripe, oozing, mold-encrusted, reeking cheeses, the best known being Brie and Camembert, that we all love to smear on slices of crusty baguette and eat with relish, accompanied by a glass of red wine and an assortment of fruit or olives? (Bread and wine being two other famous fermented foods.) Or the yummy blue and gorgonzola cheeses, shot through with tendrils of mold, that add so much to salads, pastas, omelettes, and Silence’s famous Endive Boats?

Yes, our friend Ben can see why cheese is viewed with suspicion and disgust by cultures where it isn’t normally consumed. Not all cheese reeks, of course, but it strikes me that the milder the flavor, the more plastic the texture, and that’s a cause for suspicion in and of itself. (Pass the string cheese, please.)

Mind you, I also know why fermented foods hold such a tenacious place in our cultures, and why they’re still revered and even enjoyed when the reason for their existence no longer matters. In the bad old days, when having enough to eat ranked right up there with fire and shelter as one of the only things that really mattered, fermentation—along with drying and curing (typically by brining)—was one of the few ways people could keep food for the seasons of scarcity, rather than having to eat it all immediately.

Unless you lived in the far North, refrigeration wasn’t an option. The absence of sugar made jellying and jamming impossible. And canning was an undreamed option until Louis Pasteur came along.

To have food—any food—was wealth, was luxury. Who cared what it looked and smelled like? The desperately-needed calories from alcoholic beverages (fermented grains and fruits), rendered fat, and grubs, the minerals and protein in foods like tempeh, yogurt, and cheese, and the residual vitamins in foods like kimchee and sauerkraut, kept people alive and comparatively healthy until the season of planting and harvest returned.

Silence and I think the preservation of these fermented food traditions is a very good thing. Year-round abundance and readily available food, refrigeration and canning, are all very recent phenomena. Burgeoning world populations, shrinking resources, and natural disasters, not to mention longterm nightmares like desertification, could return us to the days when knowing how to dry and cure and ferment food means the difference between eating and starving.  

Which brings our friend Ben back to the reason I actually wanted to write this post (which I’d planned even before Silence discovered the Wall Street Journal piece, which you can read at WSJ.com, “You Eat That?”). It was a photograph of Earth from space.

When I turned on my computer earlier in the week, the Yahoo newspage announced that there were phenomenal new photographs of earth shot from space, “Earth as you’ve never seen it before!” Eagerly, I clicked the link to see these photos, and encountered an archive of general photos, not the new ones of Earth. Luddite that I am, I never was able to get to those photos. But I could see the original photo, which happened to be of North America, all too clearly. 

The photo showed, in brilliant full color, a brown desert continent, with a tiny fringe of green along each coast. Mind you, it is winter, and perhaps the photos were taken in winter. But even so, all I could think about was my first transcontinental flight, to attend a horticulture conference on the West Coast.

I grew up on the verdant East Coast, where lush greenery predominates until autumn colors glow and then winter drains all the colors away. Okay, it’s not the rainforest, but plants abound and water is plentiful. And I’d grown up taking all this for granted.

Yes, I’d read about how desertification, the greedy creep of desert across formerly green, fertile landscapes, was an international phenomenon; how the clearcutting of trees had radically changed landscapes from Tibet to the Scottish Highlands; how out-of-control population growth was threatening water supplies worldwide. But I’d never thought any of this applied to America, the Breadbasket of the World, until I took that flight.

I always choose a window seat when flying, because I love to see the living map of the land spread out beneath me during the day, and the patterns of lights illuminating the landscape at night. But that trip, I made a horrific discovery that forever changed my worldview. Not that long after the plane took off, the landscape turned brown. And it stayed brown, stayed brown virtually until the plane touched down on the California coast. In some states, I could see unnatural green circles, powered by huge irrigation machines, but it was obvious that the machines were the only reason for this apparent lushness. And where, I wondered, was all that water coming from?

My flight back simply reinforced my impression. What I saw then wasn’t quite as appalling as the tiny green fringes shown in the new satellite photos, but it was enough to open my eyes: I wept with relief when the plane landed back in verdant Pennsylvania. Never again have I taken abundance for granted; I know that we only have it on loan, and only a tiny percent of us, at that.

What to do? Well, one option is to explore the global cuisine that our modern world has made available to us. Since Silence is a vegetarian, I don’t have to contemplate the prospect of being served dried rotted shark or fermented raw salmon or sausage made from raw pork, or, say, maggot-infested cheese or grubs. But she’s a fan of Sandor Katz’s seminal book, Raw Fermentation, so kimchee or (gasp) sauerkraut could be in our future. We already eat yogurt, tofu, and miso, and I know Silence is trying to work more tempeh into our diet. I’m not sure we’re ready for natto, or Limburger, for that matter. I still think you should be able to get close enough to food to want to eat it. But while there’s still time, embracing all the options the world has to offer may help us all survive the changes that may come.

So, what to do? My sister called the other day and suggested that I mash up 20 cloves of garlic, pour hot water on them, and drink a cup of this every 2-3 hours. I guess she’s still getting even for my being the oldest child. Vampire hunters, please do keep this recipe in mind! For the rest of us, garlic-rich dishes like hummus and other veggie dips, garlic knots (yum), pasta and pizza sauces, and the like should suffice. My sister also recommended echinacea in mass quantities, but if memory serves, echinacea is only effective before you get a cold, not afterwards.

Not that I’m dissing teas in general. I really love herb teas, and actually drink them without sweeteners (though honey might be beneficial for a sore throat and cough). Some of my favorites when fighting a cold are Breathe Easy, Gypsy Cold Care, and Throat Coat from Traditional Medicinals and Yogi Teas’ Breathe Easy equivalent, which is super-delicious. Because a really bad cold is stressful, drinking Celestial Seasonings’ Tension Tamer Extra, Sleepytime Extra, or anybody’s chamomile tea before bedtime is very helpful, too.

So of course I’m on the alert when anybody recommends an herb tea that fights colds and/or keeps them at bay. And yesterday, when a friend recommended an enhanced form of kuchika tea, I was all ears. She suggested using the tea as a preventative, drinking a daily cup of kuchika tea enhanced with 1/2 teaspoon umeboshi paste and 1/2 teaspoon shoyu sauce (tamari).

Umeboshi paste, derived from plums, is highly alkaline, correcting our modern diet’s acidity and balancing the body. High-quality organic shoyu introduces beneficial organisms to help you fight every kind of systemic disease. Both also happen to taste good, so so far, I was on board. But what was kuchika tea?  

Turns out, it’s a tea made from the twigs and stems of the tea plant (Camellia senensis) rather than its leaves. Hmmm. Twig tea?! Sure enough. And kuchika is a favorite tea of folks who follow a macrobiotic diet, one of the most pure diets on earth.

The flavor is described as “mildly nutty and creamy.” Um. I’ll believe that when I taste it. But actually, I suspect it will be pretty delicious with the addition of umeboshi paste and shoyu. Not unlike miso soup. And I was pleased to see that brands available in coops and health food stores here, like Eden, offer kuchika tea. So why not try it? Sure beats garlic tea in my book!

And please. If you have a foolproof cold remedy, won’t you share it with us? We’re pretty sick here…

                 ‘Til next time,

                            Silence

Even OFB was feeling sorry for me, so last night, he proclaimed that I appeared to have passed the sniveling wretch stage and we should take advantage of the comparatively mild temperatures to get me out of the house for a bit. Our ultimate goal was supper at a favorite local restaurant, but we decided to run a few much-needed errands in the nearest little town, Kutztown, before heading off to eat.

“Ben, let’s stop in at that new thrift store that’s opened by the grocery,” I suddenly announced, much to OFB’s chagrin. “Just for a minute,” I pleaded, discreetly coughing to remind him of my weakened, consumptive state. We were parking in front of the shop in two coughs, and OFB considerately accompanied me inside.

I was exclaiming over a Corningware dish that would actually fit in our toaster oven but was big enough for a lasagna (a huge challenge, since our oven died a couple of years ago and most of my ovenware’s too big for the toaster oven), a pair of beautiful handmade pysanky Easter eggs, and a pair of cardinal ornaments for our Christmas tree, when I suddenly saw her: Natasha! I’d been looking for her for weeks, hoping against hope to stumble upon her, and sure enough, there she was. The price was right, and soon OFB was escorting her to our car and I was in an exalted mood.

Mind you, Natasha’s not much of a conversationalist. But that’s not her fault, since she doesn’t have a head. Her mobility is somewhat limited as well, since she has no legs, or arms, either, for that matter. In fact, she’s a slim but shapely neck-to-hips body mannequin, discreetly cloth-covered and set on her own three-legged wooden stand.

I’d been looking for just such a mannequin since I started planning to launch a handmade wearable art business this year. I’d need one to photograph my wares for displays and online, and if I’m lucky enough to be accepted into any crafts shows, I’d need her to be part of my booth or table so people could see how my creations would look. How phenomenally lucky to find her just like that and for that price, especially after pricing mannequins, even second-hand ones! Fortune smiled.

Why Natasha? I’m so glad you asked. It seems to me that shopping for accessories and indulgences should be fun, delightful, and playful, since, after all, it’s something you’re doing for pleasure. And creating a setting for your shopping experience should be fun, etc. for me, just as creating the wearables you’ll be viewing (and hopefully buying!) is.

Natasha sounds like a supermodel to me. I love the idea of writing descriptions of my creations that go something like “Natasha is modelling Mandarin Moonlight, an opulent knotted silk halter with entarsia designs in flame and jade.” Needless to say, I just made that up. But the point is that it amuses me to show a torso mannequin and write her up like a runway model. (Admittedly, I’m easily amused.)

I still need a white, cream, or black wool turtleneck minidress for Natasha, since one of those would show off my creations to best advantage. If anyone knows where I can get one on the cheap, please let me know! Needless to say, I’ll keep checking the thrift stores around here and hoping to luck out.

Meanwhile, Natasha is sporting a white ribbed Salvation Army turtleneck and one of my favorite pieces to date. And so far, she’s managed not to attract the attention of our black German shepherd, Shiloh, or our three cats. Whew! Maybe it’s her undemonstrative nature.

Welcome, Natasha! I feel very lucky to have you. 

                  ‘Til next time,

                               Silence

Heading to Amazon to read what people had to say about this, I found this bio of Shannon: “Shannon Hayes writes and farms with three generations of her family on Sap Bush Hollow Farm in West Fulton, NY, where she grew up. The family raises all-natural grassfed lamb, beef, pork, and poultry. She holds a BA in creative writing from Binghampton University, and a Masters and PhD in Sustainable Agriculture and Community Development from Cornell. Shannon is the author of three books: Grassfed Gourmet, Farmer and the Grill, and Radical Homemakers….  Shannon currently blogs for Yes! Magazine, and her books are available through most conventional channels, as well as directly from the author at RadicalHomemakers.com and GrassfedCooking.com. Shannon’s newest book, Long Way on a Little: An Earth Lover’s Companion for Enjoying Meat, Pinching Pennies and Living Deliciously, is due out from Left to Write Press in 2012.”   

The cover of Radical Homemakers shows Ms. Hayes defiantly brandishing a rolling pin with one well-muscled arm, much like the iconic poster of Rosie the Riveter. You can see that she’s picked her battle and joined it exuberantly. And that battle is an old and honorable one, agrarianism versus industrialization, family and community values versus blind consumerism, honorable, rewarding work versus the mindless climb up the corporate ladder, whatever the price.

The roots of this argument go back to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. It shaped the lives and thoughts of the Founding Fathers; it spawned the Agrarian Movement in the early 20th-century South, led by such literary luminaries as Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate and John Crowe Ransom.

It inspired the Back to the Land/homesteading movement of the 1970s, led by those pioneering intellectuals, Helen and Scott Nearing, in their Living the Good Life books; it has been the life work of the fine novelist and farmer Wendell Berry, and has been embraced by the novelist Barbara Kingsolver. It has inspired the rise of local and seasonal eating, of CSAs (consumer-supported organic farms) and farmers’ markets, and has created a renaissance of home cooking and a backlash against fast so-called food. It has inspired chefs and cookbook authors like Alice Waters, Mollie Katzen and Laurel Robertson, and seedsmen and seedswomen like Rose Marie Nichols, Rob Johnston, Jere Gettle, and Renee Shepherd. 

Our friend Ben and I are totally on board with this. We moved to Pennsylvania back in the day when an opportunity arose to work for Organic Gardening, a magazine we wholeheartedly believed in. Our escapist reading has been publications like Mother Earth News, Back Home, Backwoods Home, and Plain, and the works of the Nearings, Wendell Berry, Gary Paul Nabhan, Ruth Stout, Jackie Clay, and Gene Logsdon. Our families still scratch their heads over why we chose to make our home in a rural cottage and fill our property with a greenhouse, chicken yard, compost bins, raised beds, fruit trees, vine trellises, woodpiles, rain barrels, and the like. Our colleagues have always asked us why we didn’t seek jobs in New York and Philadelphia, just a few tedious hours’ commute away.

Well, we didn’t want to. We’ve enjoyed our organic connection with our work and with our land, and all the plants and animals we share it with. We’re so grateful to the internet for making broader connections effortlessly possible, enabling our lives to be home-based while still keeping us connected to friends, family, world events, and the latest discoveries in every field. Letting our minds and hearts reach out, even as we’re able to remain centered.

Our choices have had, as you might expect, considerable impact on our style of living. Our cottage home needs painting in the worst way. Our cars are ancient and battered, held together with a prayer and a few strips of duct tape. We need a new stove, new laptops, a digital camera, a washer-dryer. We dream of travel but stay at home. Going to a movie, eating out, buying even the most basic new clothes become major decisions. (Thank God for thrift shops, home cooking, and Netflix!) And yet, imagine this: A life without deadlines, without meetings, without commuting, without constantly having to check your smartphone and talk, text, tweet. “I know a place where dreams come true and time is never planned,” James Barrie, author of Peter Pan, wrote longingly. We know that place, too. We’re lucky enough to live there.

But let’s get back to Radical Homemakers. The title should have clued me in right away that this is an interview book, a profile book, not a how-to book. Homemakers, not Homemaking. The author is also apparently very eager to show that homemaking is not anti-feminist, and feminism apparently occupies a good deal of her approach. (To me, true feminism is doing whatever you feel is right, not wasting time trying to prove that you’re really as good as men—shock surprise!—or that what you’ve chosen to do isn’t demeaning. But I digress.) And she was fortunate enough to have a working family farm to move her family to (for free) when she decided to leave the rat race for a more meaningful life.

Shannon Hayes has, in my opinion, created the meaningful, home-based life she sought for herself and her family. And in Radical Homemakers, she interviews families across the country who have also achieved this goal. What the book doesn’t do is provide a roadmap to help others who have the same dream achieve their goal, especially if they don’t have a family farm to move to or a family who will pay their expenses.

This is in marked contrast to the Nearings’ books, in which they explained exactly what they thought, exactly what they learned to do, exactly how they planned, exactly what they gave up,  and exactly what they did to create “the good life.”

And yet. The Nearings inspired the entire Back to the Land movement with their books. But they made their move in the 1930s, when land was cheap and plenty was available. They were published and accomplished authors, who had led privileged and cosmopolitan lives and had influential connections across the globe. Their connections allowed them to spend half of every year visiting friends and lecturing abroad, and the earnest (young, strong) groupies who flocked to their Forest Farm allowed them to delegate unpaid work, often for years, while they wrote and made music and led a civilized life.

Not that they didn’t feed, shelter, and include their volunteers in their cultural life. Not that they didn’t work hard themselves and live very simply (mostly on unbuttered baked potatoes, raw apples, and undressed salad, if memory serves, on the theory that if you aren’t hungry enough to eat plain food, you aren’t hungry enough to eat, period).

Rather, the problem was that they were delineating the new/old Utopia, based on backbreaking agrarian labor, and their vision was espoused not by farm workers but by Hippies, who embraced peace, love and drugs rather than hard work, who had no experience of work, much less farm work, and who had no support network. The Nearings were as horrified by the people who created a cult around them as JRR Tolkien was by the fans of his Lord of the Rings trilogy. There simply was no meeting of the minds. The Flower Power generation tried the homestead life, alone and communally, and next thing we knew, they’d become Yuppies, pursuing their parents’ have-it-all consumerist lifestyle with a vengeance.

Well, we’ve seen what happened to the ’80s. We’ve also seen the resurgence of the back-to-the-landers, with urban farms and urban chickens and CSAs and farmers’ markets and slow food and seasonal eating and locavores. We’ve seen how the internet has given all these trends vitality and longevity. And we love that.

So what if Radical Homemakers is an inspirational rather than a how-to book? As long as readers expect inspiration rather than how-to, I see no problem with that. Reading the Nearings and Organic Gardening opened our eyes to new possibilities, honorable livelihood, the concept that you could go back to the land without giving up culture and civilized pursuits. This realization changed our lives’ directions. Who knows what you might find that would trigger a total life change, or a minor tweak that would make your own life whole?

The world of blogging offers a great opportunity to explore the lives of real-time homesteaders, family farmers, and urban bioneers, to see how hard they work, what they’ve chosen to do, the rewards and trials, how their families like it. Some places we love are Jackie Clay’s blog (http://www.backwoodshome.com/blogs/JackieClay/), Gene Logsdon’s musings (http://thecontraryfarmer.wordpress.com/), Alan’s adventures over at Roberts Roost (http://www.robertsroostfarm.com/), Daphne’s Dandelions (http://daphnesdandelions.blogspot.com/), Aunt Debbi’s Garden (http://auntdebbisgarden.blogspot.com/), Future House Farm (http://futurehousefarm.blogspot.com/), and The Home Garden (http://www.growingthehomegarden.com/). We love many other blogs, of course, but these cover various aspects of self-sufficiency and food gardening, from urban and suburban spaces to a few acres to a few hundred. Check them out! 

And if you’ve read Radical Homemakers, please let us know what you think!

           ‘Til next time,

                        Silence

Prior to this past fall, Paterno—affectionately known as “JoePa”—was known as the winningest coach in major college football, with 409 wins, 37 bowl games, and 2 national championships to his credit. “He will go down as the greatest coach in the history of the game,” according to Urban Meyer, head coach of Ohio State’s football team and a strong contender for the title himself.

Paterno had coached for Penn State for 61 years, 46 of them as head football coach. A starring quarterback and cornerback at his own alma mater, Brown University, he had plans to go on to law school before his Brown football coach convinced him to come with him to Penn State as an assistant coach. Paterno never looked back, devoting his life—and millions of dollars of his own money—to Penn State.

But he never lost his own drive for academic excellence, and passed it along to his players, insisting that they pursue their academic studies along with their football-glory aspirations. As a result, more of his players graduated including 49 academic All-Americans. “Besides the football, he’s preparing us to be good men in life,” former Penn State linebacker Paul Posluszny summed up. And what did his millions go to build at Penn State? A stadium? How about a wing of the university library?  

So why does his AP obituary notice read “Fired Penn State coach Joe Paterno dead at 85″? Why did the Big Ten ignominiously strip his name from its championship trophy, and Penn State drop plans to honor him by naming its football field after him? Why did columnists like TheAtlantic.com’s Andrew Cohen feel free to make statements, days before Paterno died, like ”College football legend Joe Paterno gave his first interview about the sexual-abuse scandal at Penn State last week, portraying himself as a confused, sick old man… Sorry, Joe, no one outside Penn State is buying it.” 

Well, our friend Ben is buying it. And I think Penn State’s treatment of Paterno is disgraceful. This man gave up his personal dream and devoted his life to his teams and his adopted university. He has never been found guilty of a single shred of wrongdoing. Yet, after 61 years of whole-hearted service, he was summarily fired by Penn State’s Board of Trustees because of monstrous acts committed by another man, a man who, as far as I can discover, was not personally close to Paterno in any way. It’s as though President Obama was summarily impeached, dismissed from office in disgrace, and stripped of all his achievements because one of his staff members had been discovered molesting interns.

This really burns me up. There is absolutely no excuse for molesting anyone, ever, be they political interns or very young boys, the chosen prey of the sexual predator Jerry Sandusky, Joe Paterno’s defensive coordinator. Sandusky’s perversions not only extend over decades, but extend to helping himself to a ready-made supply of helpless boys via adoption and foster-homing boys himself and establishing a nonprofit, The Second Mile, specifically to, uh, assist homeless boys to “better” their lives. Assuming Sandusky’s definition of “bettering” meant being raped by him on numerous occasions, even while screaming for help in Sandusky’s own home while his suddenly-deaf wife lurked on the floor above. 

Is Sandusky a monster? No, not in our friend Ben’s opinion. From everything I’ve read, he’s a Peter Pan, an eternal little boy who loves the company of other little boys, but unfortunately developed the hormones and hormonal reactions of a grown man and turned them onto his little buddies. He’s one of those people society should have identified as a danger and controlled.

And in this case, society’s failure is everyone’s failure, not just Joe Paterno’s failure. JoePa was focused on football, on giving back to the university that had given him a job and a name. How likely was the devoted husband, father, and grandfather to have perceived that one of his subordinates was totally, hypocritally, tragically perverted? I suspect he had a few other things on his mind.

Critics of Joe Paterno will blame his death on lung cancer, ignoring how quickly it came on, how quickly it killed. Others may blame it on modern medicine’s shortcomings, since his official cause of death was from complications from treatment. But our friend Ben has two other suspects to propose: Jerry Sandusky, whose completely selfish, childish, childlike behavior failed to take into consideration the consequences to his wife, his family, his boss, and his college. And the Penn State trustees, whose cowardice in pinning this tragedy on Joe Paterno rather than taking responsibility themselves is not just inexcusable and unacceptable but makes them the true moral monsters, and cowards, of the story.

Shame! Shame on them! I pray that every one of them may be dismissed from their posts, and forced to spend their lives wondering if their own children have come to grief because of their personal cowardice. What have they done for Penn State compared to what JoePa has done? Hateful, craven, miserable bastards. Shame!!!

May we all try to see our way clear in this crisis. May we all learn from it. And may we all say a prayer for Joe Paterno, who in my opinion died from a broken heart and deserved better from us.

I’d been lucky enough to be gifted with a huge boxful of freshly harvested gourmet oyster mushrooms a few weeks ago and, wanting to cook them at their freshest, I’d chopped and sauteed the entire bunch with button mushrooms and sweet onions, along with Trocomare (spicy herbed salt), black pepper, and a pinch of garam masala and ground fenugreek.

I’d been using the cooked mushrooms in and on everything from lasagna and pizza to a topping for rice, but there were still plenty left. So I decided to get decadent when the weather turned really cold and make cream of mushroom soup. It turned out to be so delicious that our friend Ben has been begging me to make more ever since. When I heard we’d be hit with snow today, I hit the store and got the ingredients to make a fresh batch. OFB was ecstatic!

Mind you, this is rich, decadent comfort food, not something you’d want to eat every week. (Remember that word “cream.”) But it’s easy to make and so delicious! So here you go. This recipe serves two generously, three comfortably, or four if you’d just like a cup. Needless to say, if you’re lucky enough to get a windfall of oyster mushrooms, by all means use them! But this is the version I’m making tonight:

                     Silence’s Supreme Cream of Mushroom Soup

1 small (8-oz.) carton button mushrooms, chopped

1 small (8-oz.) carton baby bella mushrooms, chopped

1 package (8-oz.) gourmet mushrooms, mixed, or one carton shiitake mushrooms, chopped, or equivalent amount of mushrooms of your choice, or splash shiitake broth concentrate (I find this in health food stores)

1 large sweet onion (Vidalia or WallaWalla type), diced

1/2 stick butter for sauteeing

1 pint light cream

vegetable stock (any boxed brand is good)

salt (we like RealSalt) or Trocomare

fresh-ground black pepper or mixed peppercorns

1/2 teaspoon garam masala, or more to taste

1/2 teaspoon ground fenugreek, or more to taste

Marsala wine

bourbon (optional)

Melt butter in a heavy pan (I love my LeCreuset Dutch oven), and saute the onion until it clarifies. Add the spices, stir well to blend, then add the mushrooms. Continue sauteeing, stirring frequently to prevent sticking, until the mushrooms cook down and release their liquid. Add more butter and/or a splash of veggie stock as needed to prevent sticking. When the mushrooms have cooked down, reduce heat to low and add a cup of veggie stock, stirring well to blend. Add the cream, again stirring well.

When the soup heats up, taste and adjust seasonings. You can also add more veggie stock at this point, if desired. The goal is a rich, silky soup with a lot of added body from the cooked mushrooms and onions, so if you add more veggie stock, make sure you don’t thin it down; give the soup a chance to thicken up again as it slowly simmers. Finally pour a ring of Marsala just inside the rim of the pan and fold it into the soup. I like to add a splash of bourbon to intensify the flavor; you could add port instead, or skip this step. Taste again after five minutes, give a final tweak to the flavors, and serve.

I enjoy serving this soup as a meal in itself, accompanied by a crunchy salad and thin buttered rounds of French baguette that have been crisped in the toaster oven. The baguette rounds add a delightful crunch to complement the creamy soup, and of course the salad adds a refreshing mix of raw veggies to counteract all that cream.

Want to dress up the soup even more? You could hold back a little cream, and pour it over the top of each bowl in a spiral, then give each bowl a final grind of pepper, immediately before serving. Or roast a whole baby bella mushroom cap with a drizzle of olive oil in the toaster oven and add it on top of the cream/pepper spiral in each bowl.

But frankly, I’d save all that for a state dinner, and simply enjoy the hot soup, crispy, buttery baguette slices, and crunchy salad with a glass or two of Cabernet and the company of those you love. Life doesn’t get much better!

                  ‘Til next time,

                              Silence

However. After Silence Dogood and I recently received two long-anticipated gardening catalogues that arrived in our mailbox ripped to shreds, I may have to rethink my position. After all, we regularly receive clothing, home, pet, and cooking catalogues here that invariably arrive in perfect condition, however little we wish to see them. Why would the post office single out gardening catalogues for this abuse?

The answer seems obvious: The post office is involved in a massive conspiracy to wipe out home gardening in America. Either that, or it’s attempting to hasten its own demise by driving outraged gardeners to the online versions of gardening catalogues, which as we all know are never as satisfying as the ones we can hold and page through after dinner. What kind of organization would deliberately attempt to drive itself out of business? Thus, our friend Ben is left with no alternative but to fall back on the conspiracy theory. But why persecute a bunch of harmless gardeners, you might ask?

Hmmm. Perhaps the post office is in secret negotiations with Monsanto, and is hoping for a second life in the private sector after the government shuts it down. Perhaps gated communities across the nation have enlisted the post office’s assistance in their attempts to ban all plants from yards except lawn grass. Perhaps the entertainment industry has decided that gardening is dangerous, since it keeps people outdoors and away from their TV sets, and it’s bribed the post office to destroy catalogues on the grounds that any activity besides shopping and watching TV or playing computer games is clearly unAmerican. Perhaps grocers and florists have lobbied the post office to do its part to keep people from growing their own.

Then again, perhaps the post office has been taken over by outraged residents of the former planet Pluto, who have mistakenly blamed gardeners rather than astronomers for their home planet’s humiliating demotion. The possibilities are endless. Our friend Ben invites you to choose your favorite or add your own to the list.

This whole business is especially offensive given that our hero and blog mentor, the great Benjamin Franklin, was the Founding Father of the U.S. postal system. Though no agronomic whiz like his fellow Founders Washington and Jefferson, old Ben was also extremely interested in plants and gardening, introducing several species, including rhubarb, to the Colonies. A rare and wonderful small native tree, Franklinia alatamaha, was named to honor his contributions to botany and gardening by his friends, the famous early American botanists John and William Bartram. Harrumph! Et tu, post office?!

Incidentally, in case it turns out that everybody else is getting their gardening catalogues in perfect condition, our friend Ben can still fall back on that oldest form of paranoia: Why me?!!! But frankly, I think it’s the Plutonians…

In fact, I’m not sure which are worse, those horrid, watery, runny, completely tasteless so-called grits that sog down your toast, eggs, and bacon, or the grainy instant grits that stick in your teeth and taste off, like they were created in a lab from sand and chemicals. Eeeewwww!!! No wonder most Northerners can’t bear the thought of grits. But they don’t know what they’re missing.

I’ve been pondering all this since Christmas, when my sister, who lives in Alabama, sent us a care package with three different brands of grits: Quaker, Dixie Lily, and Jim Dandy. All three are enriched white corn hominy grits, and all are the “quick” kind which cook up in 5 minutes. Quaker Quick Grits are the ones we grew up with in Nashville and the kind we can get up here in scenic PA, so I was curious to see if there was any difference between them and the other two brands. I haven’t tried the Jim Dandy grits yet, but Dixie Lily tastes just like Quaker grits to me, for what that’s worth.

Mind you, making good grits is easy. And, you’ll have noticed, fast. Once your water’s boiling, pour in the grits, put your toast or muffins in the oven or toaster, and start your eggs. By the time the rest of the food is ready, the grits will be, too. There’s no excuse for making either watery or instant grits, except self-preservation.

Say what? Grits get positively vengeful while they cook. (Well, who could blame them, really?) As they thicken up to the ideal consistency, which is thick like real oatmeal or homemade mashed potatoes, they start spitting on the hapless cook. Stirring furiously to try to keep them from bubbling, and the bubbles from bursting and splattering you with boiling grits, does help. But inevitably, there will come a moment when you turn away to answer a question or get a bit distracted, perhaps by the eggs, which also need attention, and yowie! Grits 1, cook 0. I suppose long oven mitts and full-body armor might help, but really.

Let’s say you’ve cooked your grits to thick, delicious perfection. That’s the good part. Here’s the bad part: Grits are basically a substrate for butter and salt. To be really good, like white rice and mashed potatoes, they need lots of butter, salt, and pepper. And I mean lots. Grits are definitely not for the calorie- or cholesterol-conscious. Even I blanched when I opened my sister’s package and saw three bags of grits. Fortunately, they’ll keep practically forever in the freezer, and they keep a darned long time in a glass jar, too.

Okay, we’ve dealt with the bad (butter and salt) and the ugly (runny and instant grits). Let’s get back to the good. We ate grits three ways when I was growing up: with lots of butter and salt, as cheese grits, and fried. You make cheese grits the same way you make regular grits, but when they’ve cooked to perfection, in addition to butter, salt, and pepper, you stir in lots of shredded white Cheddar. Yum! I suppose you could use less butter and salt in this case, but of course, we never did.

We loved our regular and cheese grits, but our ultimate favorite was fried grits. Don’t panic, we’re not talking deep-fried here. To make them, you simply make a double batch of regular grits, serve up your breakfast, and pour the leftovers in a rectangular baking dish. Smooth out the surface, let the grits cool to room temp, then cover the pan with plastic wrap and pop it in the fridge.

Next morning (or the next morning you want grits), make horizontal cuts across the pan of solidified grits to create a long row of half-inch-thick slabs, then make one long cut right down the middle. Lift out each piece and dredge both sides in flour mixed with (of course) salt and pepper—not much flour will stick, but that’s okay—and saute them in a heavy pan with melted butter, flipping each piece over once and adding more butter as needed as you cook them up.

Needless to say, you need to eat these hot, when the outside is browned and crispy and the inside meltingly tender. So if there are more than two of you (or one of you happens to be OFB, who could eat a whole pan on his own), you may have to serve up breakfast assembly-style so everybody gets theirs hot. Trust me, it is worth it!!!  

What else can you do with grits? Well, let’s get back to that refrigerated pan of solidified grits for a minute. Remind you of anything, like, say, polenta? Polenta with better texture and flavor, perhaps? Yes, indeed, you can cut those slabs of grits and use them any way you’d normally use polenta. Grill them or run them under the broiler, then flip them and top with shredded cheese or roasted, chopped mushrooms, bell peppers and onions. Or a little tomato sauce and shredded parmesan. Or Jarlsberg and onion chutney. Or…

A lot of people like to make their grits with garlic, which would certainly add a burst of flavor, replacing the need for salt and, if you used olive oil instead of butter, would up the heart-healthy factor, too. (We eat our grits for breakfast, and I don’t know about you, but I can’t face the thought of garlic for breakfast, so I’ve never tried them this way.) And shrimp and grits is a Louisiana specialty. (Also, obviously, not eaten at breakfast!) I’m sure a world of grits recipes awaits the adventurous online. 

So, do you like grits? If yes, how do you like them? Please share your favorite ways of enjoying grits with us. With three bags, I’m going to need a few new ideas!

              ‘Til next time,

                            Silence

1. Benjamin Franklin was born in:

a. Philadelphia

b. England

c. Boston

d. Washington, D.C.

2. Benjamin Franklin was called “Dr. Franklin” by his contemporaries. Why?

a. He had a doctorate from Harvard.

b. He’d gotten an M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

c. He’d gone on to get a Ph.D. in electrical science at Oxford following his MBA from Princeton, then known as The College of New Jersey.

d. The title “Doctor” was an honorific bestowed on him as an honor because he was viewed as the leading scientist of his day.

3. Back in the day, Benjamin Franklin loved sports and games. Which of these did he not participate in?

a. swimming

b. chess

c. rugby

d. cards

e. guitar-playing

4. With which of the following women was Ben Franklin not romantically linked?

a. Deborah Read

b. Polly Stevenson

c. Madame Helvetius

d. Sally Fairfax

e. Princess Ekaterina Dashkova

5. Which of these positions wasn’t held by Ben Franklin?

a. American Minister to France

b. printer and newspaper publisher

c. Postmaster General to the Colonies

d. President of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society

e. Grand Master of a Lodge of Freemasons 

6. Which of these wasn’t invented by Ben Franklin?

a. bifocals

b. electricity

c. the rocking chair

d. the woodburning stove

e. Daylight Saving Time

f. the catheter

g. the $100 bill

h. the phonetic alphabet

i. the first chart of the Gulf Stream

j. the concept of refrigeration

k. the lightning rod

7. Which of these plays, movies, and books doesn’t actually feature Ben Franklin?

a. “1776″

b. Ben and Me

c. Isaac Asimov’s The Kite That Won the Revolution

d. “Ben Franklin in Paris”

e. “National Treasure”

f. “M.A.S.H.”

8. What institution did Ben Franklin not create?

a. The public library

b. The fire department

c. The University of Pennsylvania

d. The post office

e. The first hospital in the Americas

f. The first American militia

9. At which seminal event of America’s founding history was Benjamin Franklin not present?

a. The creation and signing of the Declaration of Independence

b. The Constitutional Congress and the signing of the Constitution

c. The repeal of the Stamp Act

d. The Treaty of Paris

e. The inauguration of George Washington

10. What is Ben Franklin’s most famous quote?

 a. “A penny saved is a penny earned.”

b. “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”

c. “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”

d. “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

e. “There never was a good war or a bad peace.”

f. “Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.”

g. “God helps them that help themselves.”

h. “Little strokes fell great oaks.”

i. “Time is money.”

j. “Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.”

k. “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

Ready for some answers? Here you go:

1. Ben Franklin was born in Boston, the tenth child and last son of the fruitful Josiah Franklin with his second wife, Abiah Folger Franklin. Josiah produced seventeen children in all. If the name Folger rings a bell, yes, Abiah was related to the coffee-producing Folgers. Ben ran off to Philadelphia at 17 to escape his cruel older brother Joseph, to whom he was apprenticed, and lived there the rest of his life (when not on extended stays in England and France). But his ancestors were indeed “franklands,” prosperous but not noble landholders in the mother country, England.

2. The correct answer is “d.” “Doctor” was an honorific, much like the honorary doctorates bestowed on famous people today. Harvard and Yale both bestowed honorary doctorates on Ben Franklin in 1753.

3.  To our knowledge, Ben Franklin never played rugby. But he was an enthusiastic and accomplished athlete who enjoyed swimming the massive Delaware River for pleasure, and he loved chess so much that he carried one of the first tiny travelling chess sets with him everywhere. He not only invented a musical intrument, the “glass armonica,” but played violin, harp, and, yes, guitar.

4. Ben Franklin enjoyed a reputation as a rake even in his own time, though to our (and the best current historians’) knowledge he never was actually physically involved with any women beyond the unknown mother of his illegitimate son, William, whom he fathered as a very young man and raised conscientiously as part of his “legitimate” family, and his subsequent common-law wife, Deborah Read. Though he clearly enjoyed a good flirtation with a pretty young woman, and proposed after Deborah’s death to Madame Helvetius, the scientific prodigy and widow of the Swiss Ambassador to the French Court, there is no proof that Ben was actually intimately involved with any of the numerous women with whom his name was linked. One woman on this list was never linked with Ben Franklin, however, but with another American icon, George Washington: Sally Fairfax, wife of George’s best friend, George William Fairfax. Though George and Sally never “hooked up” in the modern sense, he loved her passionately and idealistically all his life.

5. This is a trick question. Benjamin Franklin held all these positions in effect, though his actual title for the postmaster position was “Deputy Postmaster General.” His colleague was a political appointee and Ben did all the actual work.

6. Ben Franklin’s mind ranged far and wide, and his diverse inventions are proof. But, though he designed the first dollar coin for the new United States, paper money (aka currency) was unheard of in Ben’s day. Though he appears on the hundred-dollar bill, he didn’t invent it. And, though Ben may have been the first to propose a version of Daylight Saving Time in a pamphlet, he was being sarcastic. The person who actually established it was William Willett, in 1907. Shocking (so to speak) but true, Ben didn’t invent electricity, either, since electricity is a natural phenomenon. What he did was discover that people could channel electricity, which led to the invention of the lightning rod and opened the door for all subsequent electrical inventions (such as the light bulb).

7. Ben “stars” in all these books and productions, with two exceptions: “M.A.S.H.” protagonist “Hawkeye” Pierce’s full name is Benjamin Franklin Pierce. And Nicholas Cage’s character in the “National Treasure” movies is named Benjamin Franklin Gates, who in the first movie follows clues left by Benjamin Franklin to solve the crime. Ben himself never appears in either series.

8. The correct answer is again “d,” the post office. Ben did an enormous amount to make the Colonial postal service viable, but he didn’t create the office.

9. Benjamin Franklin was the only American present for all four major events—the repeal of the Stamp Act, signing of the Declaration of Independence, signing of the Constitution, and signing of the Treaty of Paris (which ended the Revolutionary War). But Ben was old, and though he lived to see George Washington elected as America’s first President (and congratulated him wholeheartedly), he died on April 17, 1790 (aged 84), and was not well enough to attend the actual inauguration of Washington on April 30, 1789.

10. Your guess is as good as ours. Old Ben came up with so many famous sayings that it’s hard to pick just one. We think what matters is that, over two hundred years after his birth, so many of his sayings are still known by everyone. Talk about a great tribute!

We agree with those who call Benjamin Franklin “the first American.” We also agree that Ben would be one of the few Founders who’d be delighted to be alive today, doubtless blogging like us along with his numerous other activities. Happy birthday, Ben!!!

Silence Dogood here. Cold weather makes me crave a hearty, warming lentil stew. It’s a popular choice with our Friday Night Supper Club, too, especially served with hot-from-the-oven cornbread and a big, crunchy salad. You can serve it as is, topped with shredded Swiss cheese, or spoon it up over pasta or rice. It makes a flavorful, satisfying, and inexpensive meatless meal. And, like meatless chili, refried beans, and black bean soup, it keeps beautifully in the fridge, so you can serve it for dinner, then store the rest for lunch or dinner later in the week.

Let me say a word about the spicing and flavorings that I put in this lentil stew. Some of them may strike you as odd or even downright bizarre. Trust me here: You’ll be very pleasantly surprised! I should also point out that your spicing options are very broad with a lentil stew (or any dried legume dish). You should feel free to experiment and to use what you have! My lentil stew is different every time I make it, and it’s always good. Go for it!

Here’s the recipe:

           Silence’s Luverly Lentil Stew

extra-virgin olive oil

2 large onions, diced

3 large cloves of garlic, minced

2 cups dried green lentils or more to taste

4 large carrots, sliced, slices quartered

9 new potatoes, sliced, slices quartered

large box vegetable stock (any brand)

half a large bottle tomato juice or more to taste

dried basil

dried oregano

hot sauce (we like Pickapeppa)

Trocamare, Herbamare, or salt (we like Real Salt)

whole cumin seeds

whole black mustardseeds

ground fenugreek

handful of raisins (about 1/4 cup)

1/4 jar mango chutney (I happened to have an almost-empty jar of mango chutney in the fridge last night; otherwise, I might have opted for orange marmalade, ginger preserves, or even apple jelly)

shredded Swiss cheese for topping

Pour a generous amount of olive oil in the bottom af a large, heavy stock pot or Dutch oven. (I love my enamelled cast-iron LeCreuset Dutch ovens, and used my largest one for this.) Saute the onion, garlic, spices, and hot sauce in the olive oil until the onion clarifies, adding a little veggie stock if needed to prevent sticking. Lentils can take a lot of spicing and I use a very generous hand with my spices—say, a tablespoon each. Add the raisins and chutney (or marmalade or whatever). The purpose of these is to add depth and richness to the stew’s flavor, and trust me, it works. Nobody will turn to you at the table and scream “There’s jelly in here!”

Rinse the lentils and add them to the pot, stirring well to mix. These are called green lentils, but they’re actually just the ordinary brownish-olive drab lentils you can buy bagged in any grocery store or in bulk at any health food store, co-op, or the like. You don’t want to use any of the small, delicate lentils in this stew! Go for the plain old everyday variety, which will hold up well to the other ingredients.

Now, add the veggie stock and tomato juice, and then fold in the carrots and potatoes. Let the stew cook for an hour or so on low to moderate heat until almost all the liquid is absorbed and the lentils, potatoes, and carrots are cooked through. You can actually make this earlier in the day and keep it perking away on the stove until supper, but if you do, keep it on low heat and add more veggie stock and/or tomato juice as needed to make sure it doesn’t completely dry out. You want a rich, thick stew, not soup, but you don’t want a dried-out, burnt-on mess! So keep an eye on it.

Serves 8 to 10 (or maybe 6 if everybody keeps going back for more).

Try it, you really will like it. Promise! And now, about that cornbread…

                 Silence’s Best Cornbread

1 1/2 cups white cornmeal

3 tablespoons unbleached flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 cup milk

1/2 cup sour cream

1 egg, beaten

3 tablespoons salted butter

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees F. Melt the butter in an 8- or 9-inch round ovenproof glass pan (such as a Pyrex cake or pie pan), swirling the melted butter around in the pan to coat the sides. Combine the cornmeal, flour, and baking powder in a mixing bowl. Add the milk, egg, sour cream and melted butter to the dry ingredients, and mix thoroughly. Pour the batter into the hot pan and bake for 20 to 25 minutes. To serve, cut in pie wedges, split and butter the wedges, and serve very hot.

Oh, yum! With a pot of lentil stew and a pan of hot cornbread (and maybe some luscious baked apples for dessert), it’s a lot easier to forget those icy winds and the frost on the windows.

            ‘Til next time,

                         Silence