Saturday, January 31, 2009

Thomas Jefferson's Vanilla Ice Cream

2 quarts heavy cream
1 vanilla bean
6 large egg yolks
1 cup sugar

1. Bring the cream and vanilla bean to a simmer in a heavy bottomed saucepan over medium-low heat. Stir frequently until fragrant--about 5 minutes. Whisk egg yolks in a bowl until smooth and whisk in sugar. Mixture will be thick.

2. Slowly beat about 1 cup of the hot cream into the egg yolks and gradually stir this egg mixture into the hot cream. Cook, stirring constantly until lighly thickened--enought to coat the back of a spoon--about 5 minutes. Strain the custard through a double layer of cheesecloth or a fine strainer--and remove vanilla bean. stir until slightly cooled. Cover and refrigerate until chilled--at least 1 hour or overnight.

3. Freeze the custard in an ice cream machine according to the manufacturere's directions until set but still a little soft. Scoop the ice cream into a 3-quart mold, or several smaller molds, running a spatula through the ice cream and tapping the mold firmly to remove any air bubbles. Fill the molds completely. Cover and freeze until set, about 2-4 hours.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Recovery

There is no miraculous day.
One bleeds into another,
fibers of the soul clash and tear
and scar and rip and heal.

There is no day to look back upon
and say, "that was it."
It either happens or it doesn't
or you end up somewhere in between.

You can't say Saturday the 14th,
not until twenty or thirty years later
and then what do you know
beyond the air you breath.

People tell strangers
but they don't like to talk to the one's they love
about pain.

Do you know the taste of hot, ladled soup
when it's -44 below?

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Life

Step onto the gray ice.
Is it thick or thin?
Carefully slide toward the horizon.
Ice bubbles, a rough surface.
When did it freeze like that.
3:32am two Thurday's ago?
Nature's photograph.
An icy gunshot reports across the lake.
Souls wake at the sound.
Some have fallen in.
Each step, at least, provides an answer.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

A Day at the Farm (1993)

Grandpa says he lived in this white farm house for some sixty-three years. Time passes and all is not the same, but as we made the turn off of the highway and onto the stretch of gravel, a part of the past came to life.

The fields on this February day are covered with snow, which pleases grandpa. As he says, there is nothing worse than watching your field blow away. The snow cover prevents this nightmare. It also adds needed moisture to the soil.

Somehow I can see him working the fields which were his life and love, as if it were 1950 or 1962 or 1974. I ask him how many hours he thinks he has spent sweating in the summer heat, praying for a good crop. He smiles and says he's wondered that himself.

The sky today is pure and light blue. The winter sun shines brightly on the spring like day. For a long uninterrupted moment, I see myself on grandpa's tractor, I see the black earth stretch as far as my eyes can see. I hear grandma calling me for lunch. I wish for the strength to work a day from dawn til I can no longer see. My friends are my family and an occasional visit from neighbors. The World Series comes to me over a crackling radio, and I must imagine all that I hear. Outside the house are the sounds of the winds and of the thunder, which often last into the night. I see myself look out of the window of the house, which today I can only look into.

The snow makes it hard to get around to the barn and to the old tree where my mother once played on a swing. I make a path so grandpa can join me. I go to the front door because its beauty is magnificent and because I can see the hands of my family open and close it as they did long ago. Grandpa tells me the back door was used most, so I join him back by the bush that is home to the bees during summer months.

On a near window are two thermometers. They must have been looked at and relied upon as much as television and the Weather Channel are today. A rain gauge stands atop a post not far away in the yard. What would have grandpa talked about over breakfast and coffee if not for its ability to count the rain?

I look in one of the windows and see my mother and her sisters around the kitchen table. I wonder how many times they have looked out my way at the fields, into the night. The upstairs windows must have been places to look out at the world and dream. I wonder what has taken me to a place once so full of life?

The barn stands back behind a row of trees. I trudge through the snow to get to it. Much of it is empty, but somehow memories remain. Oil stains an old swather, and sun shines eagerly through a window. This must have been quite a place when it was used so frequently.

As I look over the place with grandpa from our view in the car I feel so much of what must be in his heart and mind. Our two hours fast gone, it is time to return to Grand Forks. Grafton will provide us with a snack and some time to remember more, but it too moves by quickly. I know we will be back again.

Just outside Grand Forks grandpa tells me he never dreamt as a young man that he'd ever meet a woman so kind, intelligent, and warm as Georgia. I smile and say I've wondered myself how I was so lucky that grandpa was so lucky.

All the stories flood my mind as we drive our last mile, and I can no longer remember if 1961 was a year that it snowed a lot, didn't rain enough, or passed without significance. Grandpa seems to remember every year, every day. He tells me of 29 inches of snow in one falling, of politics, people and places. None seem as significant as the one we just visited.

I write my memories as I listen to music from a movie titled Stealing Home. It seems so appropriate. Grandpa writes about the house, "Nothing is as full as a life filled with love." Now I understand why the trip down that gravel road to the fast aging white house came to life so much for me. It is our lives, together, and our love that will stand in those fields and in my mind much longer than the sun will ever rise and set. So I visit the day eighty years ago when it began, and I will never stop going back.