Cape Cod Vacation 2019, including Edward Gorey

We went back to Cape Cod! I enjoyed my closeup photos of barnacles from our 2018 trip, so I tried a few more closeups this year.

Moonscape, or seashell sitting in the sun?

The smell of beach roses is the smell of summer.

LOBSTER ROLL. This is from Arnold's Lobster and Clam Bar in Eastham, where we also played our first family game of mini golf.


We also visited the Edward Gorey House in Yarmouth. It was delightfully weird.





I'm so glad my children got to be exposed to Gorey's oddness and oddities. The author & artist lived from 1925-2000, and he purchased this house in 1979, moving there a few years later. He had a fantastic imagination and was a true eccentric.

Our kids were given a Gashlycrumb Tinies Scavenger Hunt to amuse them on their visit.

My daughter did a great job finding evidence of each of the 26 children's untimely demises (here a bottle of lye on a windowsill, there a box of tacks on a mantelpiece).

We saw Gorey's raccoon fur coat (one of them), which he stopped wearing later in his life because of his devotion to causes of animal welfare. In his will he established a charitable trust for animals, and specified that it include not only the usual cuddly animals, but also bats and invertebrates.

In Gorey's kitchen Dracula is right next to Craig Claiborne.

The last waffle of the millennium (presumably from December 31, 1999) is preserved on the kitchen wall.

The fantod, a figure sewn and stuffed by Gorey, can be arranged into any letter of the alphabet.

Gorey liked to collect things, like large clanking rings, cheese graters, potato mashers, and thousands and thousands of books.

He also liked to have a lot of cats around--preferably 6, as he said 7 cats was too many.

The Doubtful Guest is out on the lawn.

Shchavel Borscht (Sorrel Soup)

Did you know that I spent a month in the USSR when I was 12 years old? I went there with my parents on some sort of academic exchange of my dad's. For most of our time there we stayed in a dorm room at Moscow State University (MGU), which was available because it was summertime and the regular school year had ended. The university had turned off the hot water for some reason, so I got used to taking freezing cold showers. We also went to then-Leningrad and stayed in one of the most sumptuous hotel suites I've ever seen, but that's another story.

Before our trip, my father taught me how to read Cyrillic, and this came in handy for things like reading menus, identifying which subway station we were in, and transliterating large Soviet signs (such as "Slava Trudu" which means "Hooray for Work"). I remember pyramid shaped paper containers of whole milk--you tore off a corner to pour or sip, and the inside of the paper was coated with yellow cream. I remember having the best ice cream I've ever tasted: it was always vanilla, and wrapped in a crumbly chocolate coating. We saw opera and ballet performances, ate caviar on toast at the top of the Kremlin, attended a real Soviet circus, walked around the pastel colored Gum department store, drank sugary hot tea from glasses with metal handles, and went to the VDNK exhibition (similar to a state fair). The main thing I remember about the VDNK was the water vending machines that were standing out in the hot sun, where thirsty people could drink from a shared glass that was chained to the machine. It was June, and all of Moscow seemed buried in drifts of cottonwood fluff.

This is a long way of saying that I can remember a little Cyrillic, and when I see a word like "Shchavel" I know that the first 4 letters of that word are one character in Cyrillic: щ. Shchavel is the Russian word for "Sorrel," which I was looking up because somebody had given me a sorrel plant last year and it was looking rather ripe for the picking in the corner of my garden. 

At first I thought I'd make a French sorrel soup from my plant. But when I found this Valentina's Corner recipe for Shchavel Borscht, I knew I had to make that instead. Admittedly while saying SHCHAVEL BORSCHT as many times as possible in what I imagined to be a deeply authentic Russian accent. щавель Борщ!

Sorrel is the genus Rumex, which makes it a relative of docks. The sorrel leaves are somewhat fleshy. They have a slightly piquant taste when raw, surprisingly similar to wood sorrel (which is a different genus and looks like a spindly-stemmed shamrock with 3 heart-shaped leaves).

I washed and chopped my Shchavel leaves. According to Valentina's Corner, this is really a Ukrainian soup. I don't know a lot about Ukrainian cuisine but I have noticed this country knows how to find nutrition and healing from the plant kingdom. (For instance did you know that "Chernobyl" is the Ukrainian word for Artemisia vulgaris, aka mugwort or wormwood?)

Essentially the Borscht is a chicken and potato soup that has been lightly flavored with sour cream and ketchup.

The lightly lemony sorrel gives it a bit more tartness, but it is not super sour or at all bitter.

Add a dollop of smetana (sour cream) to each bowl of Shchavel Borscht. Ready!!

Are you a Borscht person? Until I found this recipe I thought that Borscht had to have beets in it, but not so. It just needs to be sour. Na zdorovie!