A Great Deal of A Peel

If it were true that an apple a day kept the doctor away, then there would be no Ph.D.'s in Washington State. Washington leads the United States in apple production with up to 100 million boxes of the fruits a year. And that is your wowee-zowee factlet for the week.

Some of those apples wind up on the past-their-sell-by-date rack at our local market, and when we find them there, being sold for a pittance, we know it's time to make applesauce.

Even in the nation's capital of apple growing, apples aren't cheap, usually ranging between $1.49 to $1.99 or more per pound. With the size of apples grown today approaching that of grapefruits, you don't get a lot of individual apples per pound unless you find someone selling windfalls or so-called "schoolboy" apples. We end up using them sparingly so the week's supply is available for taking to work and school for lunch. That's why we only use the slightly bruised ones from the sell-by rack or the ones getting sort of squishy at home for applesauce.

So it was a coup when we bought a dozen apples for three bucks that still looked great and were just starting to get less-than-crunchy, a batch that even included wonderfully tart Granny Smiths.

To make the whole experience totally back-to-the-land-feeling (never mind that we drove to and from the market, and that one of us was on an iPod), we dragged out that icon of Yankee ingenuity, the Apple/Potato Peeler/Corer/Slicer.

Why this marvelous device doesn't have a Shamwow guy to yak it up is beyond me. It's a stubborn but nifty tool that isn't particularly happy about dealing with oversized modern apples, but it's a great labor- and time-saver when it works. Which is most of the time.

Apparently many people have invented apple corer/peelers in the past (including Eli "Mr. Cotton Gin/What the heck's a gin?" Whitney of grade-school history class fame), but the one most commonly used in kitchens today was devised by a David Goodell in the mid-1800s in New Hampshire. Thanks, Dave.

My daughter did a bang-up job of discovering the many ways you could make a hash of using the tool, a discovery process that left her in gales of laughter: she reamed out a cylindrical core from an apple, except it was not the core but rather the flesh of the apple that she bored through; she sent apples through the corer without managing to peel them; she inserted the prongs into an apple and then wondered why it wasn't working, only to discover that she hadn't reset the darn thing and had performed the equivalent of removing a disk from a computer and then wondering why the disk wouldn't run.

Also the suction cup that holds the device to the counter kept failing so that it would buck into the air and spew apple mush down the side of the counter.

Then I would use it, and it would work just fine. I am not so sure that I am pleased that this is apparently the super power bestowed on me (I'd rather be able to fly, or become invisible at will), but oh well. It must be so, because in addition to nicely peeled apple slices, I also managed to produce a record-setting, single-piece apple peel.

It's a jumprope! It's a worm! It's--Super-peel!

Well, record-setting for our kitchen, that is. A tape measure showed that the apple peel stretched for nearly 9 feet (106 inches, to be exact).

Same peel, curled up for a nap.

That makes it a mere shoelace compared to the longest single continuous apple peel on record, which was 172 feet, 4 inches and carefully, carefully cut by one Kathy Wafler Madison, age 16, on October 16, 1976.

But her peel took eleven and a half hours to cut. We produced ours in less than 15 seconds, and it compares favorably with prizewinning peels in the under-18-years category at the Damerham Apple Day in Hampshire, UK.

Oh, and the applesauce came out great, too. Here are the apples just after going into the crockpot with some cinnamon, sugar, and water, where they simmered all night long on low. There are no pictures of the resulting applesauce after blending with an immersion mixer because it's already all gone.

Fire and Ice

And no one loves a Christmas tree
on March the twenty-fifth.

That's the wrap-up to Shel Silverstein's poem "Merry," and he's right--but off by about two and half months.

By January 3, our tree, picked out so carefully and lovingly in early December (every year the chosen tree is definitely the "prettiest tree we've ever had"), starts becoming something more akin to a Wookie overstaying its welcome. Though well watered, it has started to dry out. Needles tinkle to the floor. Branches begin to droop, and ornaments roll off their tips. It's time to put all the Christmas stuff away, make a clean sweep of the house, and look forward to spring tiptoeing onto the scene over the next few months.

Fortunately, we don't have to feel guilty about putting the stripped tree on the sidewalk for waste pickup, as our city collects trees, mulches and composts them, then sells the compost in local stores. (We don't feel bad buying a real tree either, for that matter, as we've seen the local tree farms and hardworking farmers who raise them.) Other cities have similar programs; I've also heard of them being used to bolster dunes on beaches, create brush piles for wildlife, and even nesting sites for small herons and other birds in wetlands.

I've heard tell of people in Sweden traditionally tossing their trees out windows on January 13 (after holding a "tree plundering" first, in which they enjoy any treats left hanging on its boughs), but I've never seen a defenestrated conifer in flight in our very Scandinavian-influenced city.

(And I've never heard of anybody stuffing an old Christmas tree into the attic and keeping it there until spring, like the people in that weird Hans Christian Andersen story "The Fir Tree.")

A lot of people, though, prefer to send off their trees in a blaze of light by burning them, an urge that would definitely resonate with people in ancient cultures who defied the cold and dark of winter with so many fiery rituals of their own.

We joined some friends on our local beach on a crisp, clear New Year's Day to share in some treats and witness a series of crackly, dry trees go up in flames. And all I can say is: Wow. Those things burn fast.

I'm such a worrywart that I would not even dream of leaving Christmas lights lit on a tree at night or when I leave the house, but actually seeing how fast and furious a tree burns would scare the most witless person into digging a firebreak in the carpet around ye olde Tannenbaum.

(Every year, local television stations like to draw our attention to this video showing how fast a dry tree ignites compared to a well-watered one. You can actually hear the glass bulbs exploding on the dry tree as it's engulfed by flames.)

Just to keep the universe in balance, we also visited western hemlocks and other conifers in their natural habitat this past week by traveling up to Snoqualmie Pass in the Cascade Mountains, where it was very cold (about 20 degrees), and very snowy (piled up to about 13 feet).

As our toes froze and the energetic, snow-loving kids wearied of sledding and scrambling through drifts and began to look glassy-eyed and chilled, good old Robert Frost's poem "Fire and Ice" came to mind. (No. Really. It did. I swear. I mean, I didn't, like, stand and recite it, or anything. To tell the truth, all I said was something like, "Hey, there's a poem, isn't there? Fire...ice..something, something...") (Which you could say about almost any topic, and invent the poet's name, if you wanted to sound all literary, actually.)

Frost definitely said it better. You don't need me to tell you that we're switching from me to him, below.

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great,
And would suffice.

January 1, 2011: Chilly, Hilly, and Calypte

Low light, shadows, small camera, and distance
conspired to make me fail at catching
the shimmering jewel tones of this little bird,
but trust me, he was gorgeous.

Started off the new year on January 1 by trotting out the resolution I resolutely resolve every year, namely, to get plenty of exercise, eat right, etc., etc. So I followed the hilliest route in the neighborhood when I took the dog for a walk. 

 

It's a rewarding hike, because it always affords fine views of the mountains and the local lake and sometimes even Puget Sound.

This New Year's Day, it also provided a close-up visit with a little Anna's hummingbird (Calypte anna), who perched on a limb above the sidewalk and didn't mind my stopping to take a picture of him (although another hummingbird did mind my pausing--it kept divebombing me, shouting a loud chack! at me before swooping skyward again).

Anna's hummingbirds stay in the Puget Sound region all winter long despite the chill and damp, amazingly enough--you can hear them buzzing and twittering overhead on even the coldest days (and it was cold on New Year's; the low temperature dipped down to 26 degrees F).

By midday, the weak winter sunlight warmed us up above freezing, so a visit to the beach at Golden Gardens wasn't as excruciating as it might otherwise have been--though none of us dared to be as brave (or as foolhardy) as the Polar Bear swimmers who dashed into the bitterly cold water for a splash. Even the bull sea lion who surfaced about 10 feet from shore looked astonished when he saw all those shivering people in the water.

Brisk weather definitely didn't stop sailors and boaters from plying the waves, and the clarity afforded by the cold, clear sky sharpened our view of the beautiful Olympic Mountains.
 

It also improved the view of these same mountains at sunset from our front steps. All in all, a lovely start to 2011.

Signs of...Well, Just Signs--the Top Ten of 2010

Fast away the old year passes, indeed. Here it is, just hours away from being 2011, and having just read today's newspaper, I realize that top-ten lists are unrolling right and left, but unlike the writers of these lists I failed to keep track of anything this year. Movies? Books? Types of tea? Invertebrates? Ice-cream flavors? Best names for potential new pet cats? Weirdest patterns observed on novelty socks? Sadly, no...I neglected to keep lists of any of these scintillating topics, despite being rather compulsive by nature.

In a last-minute-homework-spree sort of way, though, I found I could produce a Top Ten list of The Best Signs Personally Viewed in 2010, with photographic evidence to boot. And so, here they are, with best wishes for a very happy new year.



Everything you need to know about Heterocephalus glaber, described as resembling
"saber-toothed sausages." (Pacific Science Center, naked-mole-rat exhibit)

 


Sign at the Horsemanship School in Redmond.




Always pays to read the fine print and anything in parentheses.
(Sign in shop window, Forks, WA.)





According to the Preservation Institute, "the total number
of insects killed by cars in the United States each year is
60,000,000,000,000 (60 trillion)."(gas station, Mukilteo, WA)



Why are two of the crabs in such blissful ignorance of their fate?
(Sequim, WA)



Huh. No wonder the wait in the ferry line is so long. Only one car fits in the ferry at a time.
(Kingston, WA)



Part of the "Hall of Mosses" sign in the Hoh Forest, western WA.
A favorite because (1) the trees draped with epiphytes along this
trail apparently are burdened with spikemoss, which isn't a moss
(that's one creeping over the edge of this sign), and (2) my husband
accidentally read the sign as "Hall of Moses."



Phew. Lucky me.
(Pacific Science Center)



The excellent Elephant Car Wash sign, rotating since 1956 in Seattle.



I saved the best for last.

Signs of Spring a Week Post-Solstice

Seattle isn't getting any interesting winter weather right now--nothing headline-grabbing like the blizzard that ate New York or grounded so many jets in Europe--but the temperature is definitely putting the "brrr" in "Decembrrrr." And it was pretty weird outside about five minutes ago, with snow sheeting sideways at a 45-degree angle...in bright sunshine.

Everything's soberly clad in tones of dark pine green, slate gray, ice blue, and brown. But surprisingly, we're seeing some lime-green spears of spring color here and there. They're not the usual suspects, either, such as crocuses, primroses, and hellebores.

Somehow, the message that we're going to have a very cold, snowy, hard winter in the Pacific Northwest didn't get through to assorted plants--or else they know something we don't. Or they're just tougher than we think.

It's odd to see these sparks of life just steps away from, say, a towering oak tree still rattling with dry brown leaves or clumps of exotic grasses that resemble fistfuls of ice needles.

I'm pretty sure these are daffodils poking their heads up from the sodden soil
and leaf litter, though they look a lot like those eerie giant tube worms that live deep
in the ocean around hydrothermal vents. We had record-setting warm temperatures
in January last year, with daffodils blooming mid-month, so perhaps this patch of
flowers is giddy with that memory.

The garden is spiked with crocosmia that I wouldn't
have expected to see just yet--it seems as if they'd
just faded away yesterday and really should go back
to bed for another 40 winks.

Here's one I'm not surprised to see on the verge of blooming: these are the
flower buds of a V. tinus "Spring Bouquet." Its name notwithstanding, it
typically blooms in winter. How do I love this plant? Let me count the ways: pretty,
understated flowers; purple-black berries that hang on for months; bright
evergreen foliage; thrives on little water; doesn't get woody and stalky; asks
for nothing and gives a lot in return.

The Terribly Sad but Eventually Joyful Story of the Wind-up Donkey

Poor old Dobbin.

Once upon a time there was a little girl growing up in the 1960s. When she was 10 years old, she accompanied her mother and her grandparents on a trip to Ireland, the beautiful emerald island where her grandparents were born and raised.

Being 10, she was completely and utterly smitten with horses, and had eyes for little else. Cathedrals? Celtic ruins? Ancient monasteries? OK, pretty cool. But show me some horses now, please.

One day, her grandfather and mother took her on a long train trip across Ireland to a lovely landscape dotted with lakes--the famous lakes of Killarney. (You may now hum "Christmas in Killarney" for a bit. We'll wait.)

The little girl, however, would have no memory of the lakes and their wonders, because--oh, joy!--the trip around the lakes would be made in a horse-drawn conveyance called a jaunting cart. What she remembers of this trip is that the horse was a bay, that his name was Bub, and that the driver let her feed Bub sugar-cubes filched from a restaurant.

Fast-forward a few decades, and the little girl is now a middle-aged writer who should know better than to adopt the cloying approach of writing about herself in the third person, so we'll just drop that pretense altogether now, right? Phew. What a relief.

Anyway, I somehow managed to hang on to the souvenir I bought on that trip for 50p: a small gray donkey who, when wound up with a metal key, bobbed his head and twirled his tail with such vigor that he would rattle around on the tabletop in tight circles.

Though small, the donkey was a Percheron-sized steed when he was placed with petite Dawn dolls (mini versions of Barbies), and my Irish cousins and I sent the whole gang off on many adventures during my stay there.

("OK, so where's the sad part? The drama? The pathos?" Hold your horses. It's coming.)

A few years ago, a friend stopped by during Christmastime. She admired the little donkey, who had become a Yuletide mantelpiece addition ever since the Dawn dolls had given up their modeling/equestrian careers and gone on to host morning talk shows or something.

As we stood at the door exchanging farewells, which included my nostalgic musing on the donkey's origins, she marveled at how long I'd had the little fellow and exclaimed, "I can't believe he even still works! That's remarkable!"

No sooner had the exclamation point after "remarkable" left her lips then we heard a dreadful grating, shattering sound and a metallic pop.

Glancing back into the room, we saw this: My husband. A metal key in one hand. The key in the donkey's back. Which was in his other hand. On his face, a look of sheer terror.

His time had come. (The donkey's, that is. My poor husband was just the unfortunate human who chanced to turn the key at the moment that the donkey's ancient metal innards splintered. But the timing was exquisite.) After more than three decades of tail-twirling, and head-bobbing, Donkey's dancing days were at an end.

Grumpy, Pee-Wee, and Dotty.

He still appears at Christmastime, hanging out with three other vintage wind-up animals--a puzzled Dalmatian, an absolutely furious reindeer, and another donkey, one that slightly resembles Pee-Wee Herman after playing a nasty trick.

My Better Half is a still-waters-run-deep sort of person, so I don't know if he dreads the annual reappearance of the donkey, who's usually picked up at some point in the festivities and shaken so he rattles like a metal cup full of rice.

Deck Them Halls

Christmas is great, but it's the week or two before Christmas I like best, when all the decorating, baking, plotting, and planning peak. The anticipation is the best part of Christmas, I think, though I suppose I'd be at odds with most kids, judging by how slowly my daughter thinks the week is going.

But unpacking ornaments and other decorations is at least as much fun as opening gifts and sometimes just as surprising (if you've forgotten that you owned a particular item) and rather like going through old scrapbooks and photo albums, because so many of them are imbued with memories or little stories of their own.

One of our favorite Christmas traditions is the setting-up of a little Christmas village scene. This tradition goes back to my mom's home, where my uncle used to assemble a sprawling metropolis with a downtown that clustered around the Christmas tree and spread out into the suburbs over by the fireplace and around the coffee table.

It must've been a great place to live if you were a miniature reindeer or angel--it had a mirror lake, and there weren't any kids or pets around to add weird things to the village or pluck someone randomly from the streets.

Our villagers have to settle for a high-density village atop the television and stereo cabinet. They make do with an aluminum-foil river and snowbanks made of old polystyrene packaging. The streets are lined with sixty-odd-years-old cardboard houses sprinkled with glitter.


These houses won't win any awards for energy efficiency--there's a huge hole in the back of each one for a tiny lightbulb, and the tinted plastic windows in front that once helped produce an amber hue when the house was lit were long ago punched in by the prying fingers of my older brother and I as kids. But since the best string of lights I found for them is a set of battery-operated jack-o'-lanterns no bigger than chickpeas, the little houses do shine once more with a warm, welcoming glow.

Little brushy trees dot the village, too, and at this time of year nobody can find a parking space because of all the angels marching around. (Sometimes there are herds of flocked reindeer running amok, too, but this year they've yarded up on the mantelpiece.)

Many of the angels and other small people in the village are quite old--some are probably about 80 years old, others are youngsters of 50 or so. All of them came from Germany--either from prewar times, or subsequently the East and West versions of that country. Many were made by Wendt & Kuhn, a family-owned company that started making angels and other Christmas figures back in 1915 and is still going strong today.

A lot of these figures are showing their age--they're missing paint, or wings, or even arms (not that that stops them from playing the trumpet, as my daughter pointed out as she set up one brave little marcher). More recently, a few have survived horrendous attacks on the village, catastrophes that are surely recorded in their ancient lore--attacks perpetrated by 17-pound housecats leaping up and onto their tranquil thoroughfares.

We've never actually witnessed these nightmarish scenes--we've only seen the aftermath: streets lined with fallen angels, small people and animals fallen to their deaths on the floor, lightning-bolt claw marks scraped in the tinfoil river as a cat, shocked by the sight of a village atop the cabinet, fell backward while desperately trying to gain a foothold.

Fortunately, this year the cats seem interested only in sipping water from the Christmas tree's stand and, perhaps being a bit older, wiser, and more achy, have not (yet) launched an attack on the villagers.