Pumpkin Delights

Since I've steered a little away from my crafty posts, the next few will be dedicated to the fluffy joy of craftiness and baking.  A few posts back I outlined the mountain of crap I've been navigating this year.  It hasn't really let up too much.  But I've gotten to a place where I can let some of the demands on me float away...like quitting one of my jobs.  That helped.

I know Thanksgiving is already over, but I have 2 super great pumpkin-y things to share.

The first is this adorable pumpkin birdy that my 5 year old made in school:

A little pumpkin, some strands of raffia or straw, a little pinecone, a wooden bead, a little feather and a glue gun--and Wa-La!  Cuteness.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The other pumpkin delight came from Matt Lewis of Baked Bakery, via Martha Stewart, by way of a friend sharing excess baked goods.  Pumpkin whoopie pies will make a pumpkin lover out of you.  I'm not a fan of pumpkin pie--too mushy,  sometimes watery, often grainy, soggy-crusted...but these, they're worthy of the time it takes to make them.  Do not be afraid to put in the quantity of spice called for (yes, tablespoons, not teaspoons).  Moist and delicious little cake-ettes.  I did only scoop about half of what they recommend for each dollop--made them cookie sized.  They'd be too big for us otherwise, but if you want them big, go for it.

Ingredients Makes 12 whoopie pies. FOR THE PUMPKIN WHOOPIE COOKIES 3 cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon baking powder 1 teaspoon baking soda 2 tablespoons ground cinnamon 1 tablespoon ground ginger 1 tablespoon ground cloves 2 cups firmly packed dark-brown sugar 1 cup vegetable oil 3 cups pumpkin puree, chilled 2 large eggs 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract FOR THE CREAM-CHEESE FILLING 3 cups confectioners' sugar 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened 8 ounces cream cheese, softened 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Directions Make the cookies: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat; set aside. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves; set aside. In another large bowl, whisk together brown sugar and oil until well combined. Add pumpkin puree and whisk until combined. Add eggs and vanilla and whisk until well combined. Sprinkle flour mixture over pumpkin mixture and whisk until fully incorporated. Using a small ice cream scoop with a release mechanism, drop heaping tablespoons of dough onto prepared baking sheets, about 1 inch apart. Transfer to oven and bake until cookies are just starting to crack on top and a toothpick inserted into the center of each cookie comes out clean, about 15 minutes. Let cool completely on pan. Make the filling: Sift confectioner' sugar into a medium bowl; set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter until smooth. Add cream cheese and beat until well combined. Add confectioners' sugar and vanilla, beat just until smooth. (Filling can be made up to a day in advance. Cover and refrigerate; let stand at room temperature to soften before using.) Assemble the whoopie pies: Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside. Transfer filling to a disposable pastry bag and snip the end. When cookies have cooled completely, pipe a large dollop of filling on the flat side of half of the cookies. Sandwich with remaining cookies, pressing down slightly so that the filling spreads to the edge of the cookies. Transfer to prepared baking sheet and cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate cookies at least 30 minutes before serving and up to 3 days. First published October 2008

Yumminess.

And now, onto Advent.

Gobble, gobble

Whew. With the dishes done several times over, cousins out the door at 5 am today to catch a flight, and leftovers nearly gone, I'm just about done with the turkey holiday...what a glorious time! I cooked for 15 people, children outnumbering adults by a hair.  We had an afternoon of exactly what Thanksgiving is meant to be--warmth, yummy food, reflection, cooperation, tradition, and love.  I spent several days staging the meal preparation so that I could enjoy my guests.  Inevitably there were some last minute crises that derailed my plan (such as the crying, under-napped, excited 19 month old)...but it was still good.  The fact that I would even dream of cooking a meal of this size and caliber is no small feat;  in fact, it has been many, many years in the making.

One of the gifts of children and living in the boonies is that it has stimulated me to learn how to cook.  As a child, food was fine and all.  I liked Oreos and Happy Meals.  No offense to my beloved mom, but dinner was more convenient than inspired.  She's going to read this and agree--I mean, there were four kids and a lot going on--and that was the mode of the day for the 1970's do-it-all woman.  My dad loved to cook (and was good at it) but this was a special event.  In my adolescence, I tightly controlled my food intake to have a sense of control over something in my life (read: eating disorder).  In college, living alone and being a vegetarian, I lived in Atkin's Hell on pasta and bagels.  Cooking for one, or occasionally two, is tricky and for someone wholly focused on school, well, eating was really just an inconvenience.  I dreamed of and actually think that I told someone that I'd rather eat a Jetson's-like nutrition pill and just be done with it so I had more time to study and work and do other important things.

I also was somehow miraculously surrounded by nurturing folk who did in fact love to cook (hmmm....coincidence?).  A particular friend who went on to become a professional chef fed me well for some time.  She was also a vegetarian but had the imagination and stimulation to actually look at recipes.  She made things like asparagus soup;  they were good.  I don't want to give the impression that I only ate white trash junk food...I could definitely appreciate more gourmet fare such as wild mushrooms and coq au vin (pre-veggie days).  I just had a sweet tooth and when you don't eat much, you get a lot of bang for your skimpy student income buck from a Reese's.  There was another dear family that fed me regularly through my 20's.  The mom was a phenomenal cook and had worked as a caterer in a previous life.  She could effortlessly put together a light and yummy, nourishing feast that we would consume in their garden, which she'd also nurtured to glorious fruition.  That family provided me with a lot of love and company.  These times were my first hint of a clue at the communal meaning of food and meals.  I hope that somehow, somewhere I have been able to return the favor to both of these folks.

In my late 20's I finished my training and entered my "Real Life."  I joined a practice and moved, with my boyfriend (now husband), into a home we purchased.  It's a remote location--rural and bordering on only a town-size locale.  Kinda out there.  We can't just run down the road to get take out or quick groceries.  In the first couple of years here, establishing my professional self, I worked very, very long hours and did a lot of call nights.  Still not so much time for cooking.  My guy got terribly tired of pasta, but at 8pm after a full day, that's about all you can muster.  It's funny, I never seemed to tire of it--I could eat the same thing every day, it was so low on my priority list. 

After we married and I immediately got pregnant--that's when the food relationship changed.  I was physically unable to cook at first with my nausea and exhaustion.  Then, I became ravenous for meat.  Then, I suddenly really, really cared about what I ate and passed along to my baby.  It wasn't immediate, but as I transformed into a mother, I learned to care about the world in a way that I'd only thought I'd understood before.  I'd always considered myself "an environmentalist" but when the possibility of my child suffering the consequences of my generation's missteps became real, I cared in an entirely different way.  I finally felt like I was part of the fabric of humanity.  I had thrown my genetic chips onto the table and was ready to really play.

Over time, between wrestling with my role as a mother, physician and wife, I began to feel very strongly about how and what my family ate.  We joined our local CSA and would receive a bag full of surprise veggies every week for half of the year.  I had to learn how to cook with chard, kale and kohlrabi, and began to love the challenge.  I learned to appreciate the process of eating locally--eating what your local environment can appropriately support, and eating seasonally, eating things your neighbors have grown (not things shipped from New Zealand).  That is really how we humans are supposed to eat.  And who wants mealy, pale pink tomatoes in January, anyhow?  I experimented with varying amounts of meats in our diet (I'd found between pregnancy and nursing that my vegetarian days were over, at least for the moment).  In my hyper-organized way, I planned out meals on a weekly basis and shopped with a list that was organized into the order of the grocery store where I shop.  I would challenge myself with new recipes, I subscribed to various homemaker magazines with many recipes (again, seasonally inspired), and rarely would duplicate a meal for some weird reason. 

Over the past eight years, since weaving myself and my family into the local community, I've become proficient at cooking.  I never, ever thought that I would, and occasionally my husband will teasingly ask me what my friends from past lives would think of me now (though with the magic of Facebook, I can figure it out pretty easily).  Just as sewing, knitting and other home crafts did not appeal to me, I viewed cooking in a purely utilitarian way and did not have time for it.  Then, as I grew a baby and fed it in utero and then from my very own milk, my relationship to food and nourishment changed entirely.  As I fed my children, I finally understood how people experience food as love--from day one, that is what a mother does, and that is one of our most basic human expressions of love and affection.  It grew to wanting to feed my extended family and our wonderful community of friends.  I was finally able to open myself to the incredible power of food--it connects us to one another, nourishing us both physically and soulfully.  And the joy of good food in the mouth is a wonder to behold.  Deliciousness experienced by our taste buds will quite literally change the chemistry in our brain.

This past week, I was delighted to cook for my husband's sister's family and some dear friends.  Proficient enough to not worry, experienced enough from Thanksgivings past that I could pick the recipes I knew and loved, organized enough to time the preparations, I got to make a meal that would fill my loved ones and our children.  I don't want to sound like I'm tooting my own horn, but I like the evolution of my relationship to food.  Maybe it's really just growing up.  We had a juicy roasted turkey (secret: brining) with local root vegetables, porcini mushroom, sausage and chestnut stuffing (locally collected and dried porcini), Big Martha's mashed potatoes (Ms. Stewart's mom's recipe, made with cream cheese), local green beans, home made crescent rolls, orange-cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and sweet potato pie.  Everyone but my sister-in-law, the baby and I went skiing for the day and we had plenty of time and space to cook.  At feast time, the kids played waiter and served the adults.  My son drew menus for everyone with their names and illustrations of the dinner.  The kids (all 8 of them) played together beautifully.  We said/sang 4 different versions of grace and/or blessing songs.  We went around the table and asked everyone what they were thankful for which was pure sweetness, then at the request of one four year old, we all said it together at the same time (my new favorite tradition).  After dinner, they played a modified cooperative team charades where they acted out something and all of the adults together guessed what they were (this was particularly hilarious and a great game for kids of varying ages). We didn't even turn on the TV--I saw no football.

My friend emailed me the following day and said that she felt "loved, adored, fed, comforted" by the holiday.  I could not have gotten a higher compliment.  Holidays, at their best, are opportunities for  tradition and rhythm that speak of creativity, enthusiasm for life and fun, as she told me.  I have also experienced Thanksgiving completely alone, searching for an cheap open restaurant (Thank God for The Frontier), serving the homeless donated food, working at the hospital, and with dysfunctional families.  I've had crazy and not fun times.  I much prefer this version, and hope to replay it again and again.  Thanks.

Helping Hands

Our deco motif this Thanksgiving: handprints.  They fit so nicely into the message of this season-- of lending a helping hand, working hard, giving thanks.  And they make great little turkeys.  Our table center pieces are seen here at the left and were a whole afternoon's worth of entertainment for the family.  Grama and the boys collected some gorgeous pinecones of varying sizes and then spent an afternoon tracing little hands and cutting them out of autumn shades of construction paper.  Some pipe cleaner feet, and these decorative toms were complete.  We made a whole fleet of them, though S (age 4) got tired of the enterprise.  Cutting out a hand is very hard work for a little guy--it's sort of intricate scissor work.  F, the baby, did his part by standing still for 7 seconds and permitting us to trace his chubby little hand.  C (age 7) worked hard at this activity for quite a while.  It had something for everyone (which can be tricky with this age spread)--a walk in the woods, gathering, drawing, cutting, gluing. 

We're also going to use our hand made and very wobbly (and partially nibbled on by curious teeth) beeswax candles on the table.  And C, my 7 year old, has literally spent hours making menus for each of our guests.  We are excited to have close friends and neighbors joining us, bringing authentic Southern sweet potato pie to share.  My husband's sister and her family are traveling here for the long weekend and C is already planning how he and his cousin can play waiters for the dinner.  His menus had adorable drawings of turkeys on the front and each attendee's name.  Inside was a list of the food and drawings of pies.  This was a very big deal for this boy who has struggled with writing skills, and though he's always loved to draw, the illustrations were identifiable.  I'm so proud of him, and pleased it was entirely his idea.  And the fact that he is planning on using his own helping hands for the holiday is just lovely.  We'll see how it actually turns out. 

On this pre-Turkey Day Sunday afternoon we made hand print turkey cookies.  I'll admit, they got the idea from the incessant PSA-type message between repeated episodes of The Wonder Pets on Nick Jr.  Why don't they show Yo Gabba Gabba all of the time?  And, it's easy to make 4 colors of frosting when someone else makes it for you.  But they were darn cute and the boys know how much I love to bake.  I try so very hard to share this activity with them, and really, as many activities in the kitchen as possible.  Baking, though, is like chemistry lab and requires a certain amount of precision.  I don't want to say I have to be in control, but I hate to waste ingredients (ie, throw away a pan of inedible cookies/bread/cake)...and it's a big mess to clean up flour sprinkled everywhere...and picking out eggshells from batter can be tricky.  I really do try to let go of all of my need to bake perfectly and let the boys go at it.  I would hate to damper kitchen enthusiasm, especially in a boy.  But boy, do I have to try.  And breathe a lot.

So I made some sugar cookie dough with the help of S.  He especially likes to be in the kitchen.  In fact, he loves to have a job and to be needed and useful.  I guess we all do, to some degree.  But whenever he is going astray by torturing his baby brother, licking the mud from the adobe walls, stealing special things, marking up his older brother's hand made Thanksgiving menus that took 5 hours to make, I know it's time to call him in to help me with a special chore.  It's our little way of bonding and re-setting into the right groove.  He, like all four year old's, has a hard time with impulse control.  Specifically the impulse to eat the raw dough of whatever we're making.  I've tried not to bog him down with the threat of salmonella, but he does know raw eggs are a no no, and he doesn't seem to particularly care.  So far, knock on wood, we've avoided any horrible dysenteric food-borne illnesses.

After a few hours of outside time and dough chillin' we were ready to make cookies.  We made a template with outlines of hands that we cut out and used on the dough to trace and cut.  A few minutes in the oven and we were ready for the fun part, the decoration.  These cookies could have turned out cuter if I'd made multiple shades of frosting, but I just wasn't up for it today.  We had orange and that was going to have to do.   A chocolate chip eye, a candy corn beak and some free form frosting work finished the birds. 

It was a fun way to spend the afternoon.  I have always loved to bake, from childhood--much more so than cooking (future post on that one in the pipe).  And taking the time to bake from scratch makes the reward that much sweeter.  I walk that tightrope of appropriate amounts of treats for my children, and it's a tricky one.  I fear if they are deprived that they will never learn their own limits on sugar intake.  But I don't want it around all of the time.  We don't buy packaged cookies, and baking together seems to be a nice compromise on the whole issue.  We get to have together time, use ingredients of our choosing, and see the work that goes into making a sweet.  Then we get to enjoy it--a treat on many levels.  It was my treat to see all three of their sweet little hands in cookie form.

I'm hoping to find someone to share these with, as the recipe made a lot of dough...and after we lost steam on the precision needed for free form hand carving, I used my fall cookie cutters to make oodles of pumpkins, leaves and acorns.  I or my husband will probably take them to work--that's what we usually do with our confectionary excesses.  People who work in hospitals need that kind of love sometimes.

I'm looking forward to the coming week, though there's much work-- cooking, baking, decorating--to do for the celebration.  I'm sure if I just let go a little, let things be a bit imperfect, take the gifts of many helping hands, a great time will indeed be had by all--including me.

From Mind Fullness to Mindfulness

Getting swallowed up in the quicksand of peripheral junk that comes with the holidays is dangerously easy:  the shopping, the lists, the menus, the parties, the school plays and concerts, the traveling.  It's all for a good cause but friends, let's keep it in perspective.  It's nearly Thanksgiving-- give some thanks.  And for those of you who tirelessly give to others--and you know who you are--be kind to yourself.  Every few days Oprah efficiently reminds me in email form to be grateful, to be mindful.   She's a ka-jillionaire and has an army of Deepak's and Oz's and trainers and cooks...easy for her to say.  But for us little people, there are actual scientific studies that show how mindfulness will lower blood pressure and have generally positive benefits on health and the like.  It's a simple moment of stopping thinking and checking in with your body.  If you have the time and/or patience, it can be extended into full on meditation.  And the practice of gratitude will keep things real.  Every time I work with patients I am given the gift of perspective--that the little things I can get upset about...compared to leukemia, not so big.  When I ask my little ones what they are thankful for, they say, "For being me!"  And what more basic thing do we have to be thankful for than existing as who we are on this earth!


I am a morning person...sometimes by choice and sometimes by crying baby alarm.  I love seeing the world at sunrise.  It's so quiet, still and the day is full of promise--that moment of anticipation that is sometimes sweeter than the moment itself.   I'm particularly inspired to capture these beautiful moments when the light is just emerging and holds amazing colors.  I am not good at taking pictures;  I love digital cameras as I can snap away and filter through for one or two good ones.  The fact that these photos turned out at all is due only to the natural beauty of this place.  I love the light here in Taos and can see why so many artists were drawn to this place.  You could make a pile of bear turds look good.  In these moments--sometimes captured, most just floating around in my sub-conscious--I am fully aware, and often quite thankful for just being in that very moment.  These pictures here I snapped over the past few weeks from my porch, as I've watched the season change from a lovely fall into a quiet early winter, in a few quiet spaces I've found.


When I get anxious, angry, short tempered, I look out my window.  And breathe.  This will work anywhere, really--not just in the foothills of the Rockies, though that definitely helps.  It's the change of scenery, the injection of physical perspective into a moment that will diffuse a stressful patch.  As a person ruled largely by the left hemisphere of the brain, I've only learned to appreciate beauty for it's own sake over the last ten years or so.  C, my 7 year old, will tell me at random moments to look out of the window--at home or in the car--to notice something, a cloud, a bird, the light.  These moments give my life an unbelievable richness.  The beauty that is around us all of the time is joy made manifest in physical form.  Both older boys will set the table and want it to look beautiful just for the pure enjoyment of it being beautiful.  It's amazing how quickly and easily we can wrap our minds into a tizzy about a to do list, an upcoming meeting, a child's temper tantrum, or my nemesis, being on time.  But when you step back, look out the window at the trees and mountains (or streets full of cars and people, which has its own, different beauty) and think about how incredible it is that we are all here; that somehow this little rock flying in orbit around the sun, spinning away, happens to have just the right combination of weather and water and vegetation to allow us to live here in relative harmony...it's almost overwhelming to consider.  Whether you believe God created it or it happened through a synchronicity of perfect conditions--well, either way it is nothing short of miraculous.  Sometimes when I think about it I have a little out of body moment and get quite literally lost and a little nauseated and frightened thinking about the universe and our place in it.

I'm writing this as much as a reminder to myself, as a plea to my wonderful friends and family.  These, like so many things in life, are a practice, and despite the saying, we will never make perfect of it.  So step away from your daily drudge and consider your body as a temple, an amazing machine.  Feel your bones and height and strength.  See your family as the anti-entropic drive of life's longing for itself.  Your home as sacred.  Your road, city, town, as an amazing complex of math and science and art and humanity all thrown together to drive cars, build houses and live together--with all that entails.  And when you stop and think about what you might be thankful for--it's the most basic things, right?  Family, health, friends.  It's not really the big fancy stuff.

Slow down for a moment in this crazy time and be mindful of your self and well being.  Break off an icicle and enjoy.  Stare in awe as a crescent moon rises along with the sun.  Stop cooking dinner and look at the sun setting, casting light through a snow squall.  Know that any little (and even most of the big) transgressions shall pass.  When in doubt, add more love.  Take moments to be grateful--remember how basic our needs really are and what we most want around us.  And be thankful that you are you.