Once or twice a day, I meet Zip at the table in the back porch. I usually take photos on or from that table, and he likes to lie down next to me. At some point, when he gets his neck scratched, he closes his eyes and goes to sleep, one of the very few times I see him resting.
I wrote the other day about the night-long battle with a frighteningly intelligent rat who had built a nest in our refrigerator and the resulting brawl and hide-and-seek struggle with Bud, our Boston Terrier, that went on for hours.
We got the rat out, and Maria eventually released him into the woods. I suspect he will return to the farm in one way or another. She just couldn’t kill him or wait for me to do it.
In the brawl, Bud tore the back of the refrigerator off—the part that allows the generator to cool.
We thought the refrigerator, which is about 20 years old, was doomed. Maria has been mulling what to do about it. This morning, she sat down with her tools, pieces of cardboard that Bud had pulled off, and other pieces of cardboard she had carved from boxes she had saved to mail her artwork.
( The damage from Bud tearing the back apart to get to the rat.)
I wish I could share the details, but I need help understanding what she did. Our appliance person said it saved the refrigerator.
As I’ve written ad nauseum, Maria is an amazing person. She is part Louise Bourgeois, Willa Cather Woman, Tarzana, and Ms. Fix-It. There are very few things she cannot fix or learn about.
In between, she makes beautiful art.
This morning, she sat behind the refrigerator with Bud, closely observing and drilling buzzing, scissors cutting, and tape measurements, putting the mess together. Maria never brags, so I didn’t know when we got married that she was capable of doing so many things perfectly and quickly.
Even an old dog like me hits the hydrant occasionally; Maria was my big score.
Also, this morning, and between her other conquests, she saved her first insect of the season from drowning in the water bucket we keep filling for the animals on the farm.
The moth was caught in the water; after Maria pulled him out, he shook himself off and flew away.
We’re taking our friend Alfredo out to dinner tonight. This is her birthday week, so I’m checking out early and going to an exotic new restaurant in Greenwich, N.Y. It’s still light out, which is wonderful, and I celebrated by taking pictures of the souls of orange flowers.
See if you can guess what they are. For once, I actually know, and I can even spell their names right. I just visited with Bip and Zud. Both are happy—me, too. I love this color.
Please remember the children at the Cambridge Food Pantry if you can. The pantry is calling for granola bars, 60 bars, 30 pouches, $12.49.
For breakfast and energy. Later.
Happy birthday, Alfreda, a wonderful person and friend. Jon and Maria. She can light up a room all by herself.
The pandemic uprooted all kinds of people and their lives, it did one interesting thing for my little town in upstate New York – we got some wonderful cooks and food dreamers who are changing the cuisine up here, and radically.
It is never too late to grow and change. Could I still become a gourmand?
Every week, I go to the Covered Bridge Baking Co. in Shushan, a few miles up the road, to pick up my seed bread and some cookies for Maria. A few weeks ago, I decided to try Kean’s focaccia bread, which she described in such delicious terms.
To my surprise, I found it not only delicious but healthy, especially given the ingredients she used.
I’m not sure I’ve ever tried focaccia bread before; I always thought it was unhealthy and heavy. Neither is true, at least when Keel makes it.
Then yesterday, I read an e-mail from Kean the owner and chef of Covered Baking Co., and it said:
“I’ve got a new focaccia special. This week, the focaccia is topped with garlic confit (garlic, slow-roasted in extra virgin olive oil until it is cooked all the way through so it retains its powerful garlic flavor without any of the bitterness or bite of raw garlic.) and cherry tomatoes for a little acidity and a pop of sweetness, and fresh chives from my garden for a little bright spring flavor. For those of you who don’t know about my focaccia, it is made with whole-grain Turkey Red Flour from Hickory Wind Farm in Cambridge. It is completely naturally leavened, so just like all my sourdough, its ingredients are flour, water, and salt, plus a little bit of olive oil and whatever topics are the weekly special.”
Then I checked with my favorite diabetic food guide for good measure, and it said this:
Wholegrains are an intelligent choice, not just for people with diabetes but for the whole family. If you have diabetes, wholegrain foods are usually better for managing blood glucose levels because they tend to have a lower glycemic index.
It seemed too good to be true. Every Tuesday, I drive up to Kean’s bakery to get my whole grain multi-seed sourdough bread and have a slice of toast for breakfast. I’m very careful about my diet as a diabetic. A nurse once told me, “Either you control it, or it controls you.”
Maria decided she had chores to do in town, so we drove to the Covered Bridge Bakery and picked up our order in a tin chest outside her house. I left money for the two whole grain breads, and Maria and I went bonkers over the focaccia we just got.
It smelled beautiful, and I opened up two chunks in the car. We both loved it; it was terrific.
I’m amazed at the changes the pandemic brought to our quiet little village. Kean McIllaine came up from Washington, D.C., and she is moving to a bakery just down the road. I’ve always been a food philistine; dinners were never pleasant in my house, and I always saw food as an interruption in my food. Maria is much more sophisticated about food than I am, so I’ve improved.
But living in this quiet and not too populated small town near the Vermont border, I never expected to find a garlic confit focaccia or a loved one in this town where gourmet dining is meatloaf and potatoes. Life is full of crisis and mystery, and growing and changing are becoming hobbies.
I drove by the pantry for years and had no idea that unsung men, women, and children worked hard and for hours to make it work. I’ve resolved to photograph this work; these volunteers deserve acknowledgment and recognition, even if they never ask for it or even want it.
I’m going to correct that.
(This week, you can help. According to Sarah, the pantry’s director, the Children’s most wanted and needed food is Granola Bars. $12.14 buys 60 Bars and 30 pouches of Nature Valley’s Crunchy Granola Bars. That’s a lot of healthy food for a lot of children. They need the energy and calorie boost. Help if you can.) It’s on the Cambridge Food Pantry Amazon Wish List.)
Such kindness and humility are lost in much of our public life in America. Still, they live in rural communities everywhere and thrive in my tiny village of Cambridge, up by the Vermont border northeast of Albany. I’m proud to be a small part of it. To see their work is to be reminded of what our country’s heart is like a nation where citizens step in to help one another when the chips are down.
I go to the pantry at least twice a week now, once to help with the backpacks program and once to see the Regional Food Bank delivery come loaded with food. A dozen men and women work all day and into the night to catalog and list the food, unload it, unpack it, and distribute it to the shelves scattered throughout the building. People come every day to do different things.
It’ll be gone in a day or so. My mission is for people to see who is doing this desperately needed and difficult work.
They have been working together for years, know one another well, work silently and efficiently, and sometimes kid one another. Otherwise, they work. Some haul boxes, others stack shelves, others load freezers, and others break the boxes up.
They keep meticulous records so that the pantry can see what people need and are taking home.
They know what their jobs are, and it takes them a whole day to get the food ready to be picked up by the people they call customers – 417 people last Saturday alone, 173 backpack children.
The helpers are young and old,
(4th and 5th graders take the food backpacks to the local school every Friday, where the families in need can pick them up for the weekend while protecting their children’s privacy.)
Volunteers drive an hour or so to the Regional Food Bank to pick up the Cambridge Pantry’s allotment. Other volunteers are waiting for them, passing big boxes down the line to one another, making sure they each go where they are supposed to go, and keeping a meticulous record of what comes and goes.
Strong men and women carry the boxes into the pantry while others take them to storage rooms—freezers, refrigerators, and shelves for cans, boxes, and bottles.
I’m struck by how efficient the system is. These people have been working together for years. They ask for nothing, complain about nothing, and fan out through the building, knowing exactly where to put the donated food. It comes from the Regional bank, farmers, local grocery stores, and, recently, the Army of Goods. You all should see who the people behind the scenes are. Each shelf lists how many items can be taken.
A massive bag of potatoes came today. It’s going in the grocery section.
Lots of the food has to go into freezers and refrigerated rooms.
No one who comes from the family is treated hurriedly or disrespectfully. “We treat them all like family,” said one of the volunteers, “and some are.”
It is beautiful for me to go to the pantry on delivery day and see all the people working behind the scenes. I’m going to keep doing this every week.
I asked one of the volunteers why he was doing this. “When I die,” he said,”I want my family to say that I was kind and did good when I could.”
And please remember the children’s Granola bars. You can see them and order them here.
