Living from scratch, inspired by Aunt Ella's noodles

by June

Lately, I've been very aware of the work that goes into living the way we do. Mind you, we are not up in the hills or at the end of a long road. We are not off the grid or off the clock. We can walk to the library or drive to the market in a few minutes. We have almost daily obligations to the greater world that require us to check the time, plug ourselves into meetings, grind against deadlines. And, yet, we choose to live on our little patch of land in ways that my great-grandparents would have recognized: We grow much of what we eat. We preserve what we can. We hang clothes to dry on the line and feed the sourdough starter daily. We chase the chickens out of the spring sprouts and gather eggs. We create a meal around a head of cabbage or a batch of homemade noodles. As much as we can, we live from scratch.

But why? My great-grandmother would have loved our electric dryer. The computers, the iPhones, the cameras, these would have boggled her mind. The way we live seems plain wrong-headed on days when we go-go-go then come home ravenous to a kitchen where supper begins with peeling or chopping and ends, if we're lucky, an hour later with a sink full of pots and pans and dishes.

I think the credit (surely not blame) belongs to my dear Aunt Ella. She was my grandmother's sister, and I was born on her 71st birthday. I baked her a birthday cake every year (early on using my E-Z-Bake oven), and she made me popcorn with sugar, gave me her wedding quilt when I graduated from college, and taught me to adore cooking her way.

Aunt Ella's portrait on top of our piano

When I was a child, a certain tone of awe accompanied the words "from scratch." This was at a time when many of the mothers I knew (and mothers, not fathers, were the ones doing all the cooking then) were exchanging recipes that included the word "easy." The easy part involved opening a can or a bottle of catsup. But even as convenience became the chief kitchen virtue, Aunt Ella would make a Sunday dinner of chicken and noodles whenever our Kansas family was coming. My daddy was known to grumble about little bones slipping into the meal, but as young as I was, I knew this was special food. It was made with love and anticipation of a good time: Her sister was coming! Aunt Ella served the chicken and noodles on her good china, and we drank our iced tea and milk from little pink glasses left over from the Depression.

What I learned at my Aunt Ella's Sunday table, I have carried into my everyday life. And somehow it lends every day a little air of celebration: We are together around our table, eating food made with love. Sometimes we even pour our milk from a little pink pitcher left over from the Depression. For me, Aunt Ella's homemade noodles still epitomize the best in life: our own eggs, our hands rolling out the dough, our pleasure in the meal. She gave me her quilt and her locket and a bracelet; and she gave me a way of life.

It's a way of life that families are choosing more often because we must consider sustainability. But what if we embrace this way not because of our fears and guilt but more because it slows us down and reacquaints us with the simple joys of sustaining ourselves: the aroma of soup simmering on the stove all day, the time to think as we pin laundry on the line, the anticipation of warm bread as it is rises and bakes? What if we choose it because deep satisfaction comes from making our own way in the world? For a short span of decades in the whole sweep of history, we humans have dismissed our traditional ways in favor of throw-away convenience. My lifetime has seen the worst of it, I hope, but I feel blessed to have been influenced by someone born in 1893 and blessed also to be able to pass her knowledge on to my children, who were born in 1999. Fern and Blossom can make Great-aunt Ella's noodles from scratch. They are never going to forget that. And they are sure to pass it on.

But living from scratch is work. My father grumbles that there is no can opener in our house, by which he means no electric can opener. It's not that we don't open cans, we do. We just aren't willing to give a can opener space on the counter where we need to knead bread and roll out Aunt Ella's noodles. We just work a little harder at opening a can if we have to open a can.

We work a little harder in general. And it can get tedious. Sometimes I wish Aunt Ella were here to make supper for us, but since she's not, the four of us pitch in together. We pull the meal together, each one doing a little bit: washing the greens or dicing the onion, boiling the water. We talk about our day. We roll out dough and dance to Otis Redding and laugh at ourselves dancing to Otis Redding. Then we eat well and drop into our beds satisfied (and hopefully we've remembered to get the next day's bread rising).

I watch how our daughters embrace this life. They have never known another. Even on the coldest days, they suit up (coat, snow pants, boot, other boot, hat, scarf, glove, other glove) and head out to care for the chickens. I tell them how proud I am. I say that not every ten-year-old would shoulder the responsibility when the wind is blowing two-below. Fern looks up and says, "But then they'd have dead chickens."

So out they go into the bright cold of the new year. I watch them track back and forth carrying water. They examine frost-nipped chicken combs. They find the eggs. From the kitchen window, as I wash dishes, I watch my daughters turn toward the warm house at last. They trudge toward the door through the drifts of snow. Suddenly Fern pirouettes in her boots. Behind her, Blossom twirls too. Then they trudge on.

Somehow those little twirls signify everything. We are doing the work of our lives here, and it is cold and hard sometimes, but there are moments when we forget we are working, when suddenly we are dancing.

Aunt Ella's Hand-rolled Noodles

one egg per person

2/3 cup flour per egg

1/2 teaspoon salt per egg

Sprinkle the salt into the flour. Make a bowl of flour on the counter. Beat the eggs together then tip them into the center of the "bowl." Swirl a fork through the flour and into the egg, back into the flour, back into the egg. Do this until a soft dough forms. Start rolling it out on floured surface. Use more flour if it is too sticky, but try not to let the dough get heavy. You want it to be soft yet elastic. Roll it out until it's a thickness that appeals to you, really thin or really thick.

Either flour the rectangle of dough and roll it up, jelly-roll style, then slice. Or run a crimped cutter along it (or a pasta bike if you have it) until you have long strips. We let them rest on the counter until we scoop them into a pot of boiling water (or boiling broth). Time in the pot will depend on thickness. Taste frequently to determine how you like it best (but do leave some for those who everyone who helped make the noodles).

They are good with chicken from a pot. Or they are good with melted butter and a good zesting of pepper and salt. They are best served with good memories.

Savoring the harvest: Cranberry chutney with homegrown shallots

by June

Since we eat from scratch, I love simple preparations that accentuate the flavor of the ingredients (and go together fast enough to satisfy our hungry children). But on special occasions, the work of a dish can intensify my pleasure in preparing it. This is especially true at Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving revolves around food and tradition and family and thankfulness, and through years of holidays, these strands have become entwined for me. When I cook for my family, memories tiptoe in from other days, other years.

This morning, I spent time alone in the kitchen making our favorite cranberry chutney. I'm rarely alone when I cook. Blossom and Fern share the family passion for cooking, and we are often all there together, talking and laughing. But today, the girls had chickens to tend. Birch was out and about. So I found myself cooking and going wherever my mind wandered. Fortunately, making the chutney requires blanching and peeling a half-pound of shallots. So my mind had a lot of time to wander.

It wandered from the May day I planted the shallots in my garden to the first Thanksgiving I spent in New York City, a day when a friend and I roasted our first turkey and watched the Macy's parade across from the Museum of Natural History. The sky was so blue it seemed like a Missouri sky to me; I ached for the only family I'd ever known. But that was also the Thanksgiving I realized the joy and importance of the family one finds in the world.

As I trimmed shallots for tomorrow's feast, I thought of waking on Thanksgiving day to hear my mother in the kitchen, to smell the celery and sage, to feel the deepest sense of well-being I have ever known in my life...because it happened every year and I imagined it always would. I thought of the long walks my father and I took every Thanksgiving along the railroad tracks: I would be eager to get home to the fireside, and he would distract me with the same joke he seemed to fish out of his back pocket every year, "You may think this is an icicle on my nose, but it'ssss not."

As I blanched and peeled the shallots this morning, I thought of how lucky we are that my grandfather will be at my mother's Thanksgiving table this year. He'll tell 92-years of great stories. Even though I won't be there to hear them, I love knowing that he'll be telling them. I thought too of how my great-aunt Ella was always at our Thanksgiving table when I was growing up and how her homemade noodles are still on our every holiday table and how the great-great-nieces she never knew nevertheless know her...and know how to make her noodles and will be making them for Thanksgivings beyond the stretch of even my imagination.

I was filled with thankfulness as I cooked this morning...for the children chasing chickens outside the kitchen window, for the husband who will bake our bread, for the people who love us and show us they do. I felt such deep gratitude for the kindness shown to us this year.

For me, cooking is an act of deep thoughtfulness and thankfulness. It's the perfect start for our celebration. It is itself an act of thanksgiving.

"Best" Cranberry, Shallot and Dried-Cherry Chutney

1/2 pound shallots (about 16)

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup white-wine vinegar (tarragon is very good)

1 cup dry white wine

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup dried, unsweetened sour cherries

2 cups fresh or unthawed frozen cranberries, picked over

1/2 cup water

• In a saucepan of boiling water, blanch shallots for one minute. Drain. Peel shallots and separate into cloves.

• In a heavy saucepan, cook shallots in butter over moderate heat, stirring until coated. Add sugar and 1 tablespoon vinegar and cook until the sugar mixture turns a golden caramel. (The texture will be very grainy, dry, and weird-seeming; don't be discouraged.)

• Add remaining vinegar, wine, and salt and boil one minute. (Don't panic if the sugar caramel hardens; it will melt.)

• Add cherries and simmer, covered, 45 minutes, or until shallots are tender.

• Add cranberries and water and boil gently, uncovered, stirring occasionally, ten minutes, or until cranberries burst. Transfer to bowl and cool. Serve at room temperature.

• Makes about three cups and can be cooked five days ahead and chilled, covered.

In my kitchen memory book, I did not note where I found this recipe. The first time I made it, in 1996, I spent part of the same day re-reading Jane Austen's Persuasion and listening to Ella Fitzgerald by the fire. I've been making it for Thanksgivings ever since.

Ancestral lights

by June

The poetry of Deborah Digges entered my life the week my grandmother left it. I still have the yellowed copy of The New Yorker; the poem is there on page 44. It is called "Ancestral Lights." I recognized something of my jagged self in her words and not just because she wrote about loss (of belief, of those who came before) and not just because she knew what it was like, as I did, "to lie there, whole, myself, safe in the coarsening grass of a Missouri August."

I was in my last year of college. I was preparing myself to let go of what had defined my life and to find what would be. Her words glimmered with all I hoped was true: that the familiar and beloved would illuminate what was to come.

And though I know now that Heaven may be

only the mind's fear of the wonders it imagines,

the way our best thoughts surprise us

and seem not to be our own, I like to believe

we turn into light around those we love,

or would have loved, had we known them,

and warn them through the blood

by ringing in their ears.

Deborah Digges is gone now. If you have not read her poetry or her memoirs, go. Do.

I will always think of her on summer nights, especially in Missouri, especially when families sing old songs and fireflies rise.

Blossom and Fern with a firefly; Missouri, 2007