Weeks 8-9: Robber Barons & Rhubarb

Hello! How are you doing?


At some point I'm going to stop counting weeks of this pandemic. I will remember that our lockdown started on Friday the 13th of March, and then 2020 unfurled from there.

Things are continuing to open back up in our state of Vermont. As of yesterday there were 933 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in our state, which puts us way down at the bottom of the list along with Montana & Wyoming. I don't know if it's possible for this "flattening" trend to continue after things open up more, but I hope so. Our neighboring states of New York and Massachusetts have many many more cases (340,000 and 82,000 respectively), but they also contain the major urban centers of the whole Northeast so I guess they're very different from our backwater area.

The past weeks have been a bit abstract for the "specials" that I'm doing Monday-Thursday with my two children, but here are some highlights.

One day we looked at a book about the history of Brattleboro, Vermont, and found that "Jubilee Jim" Fisk, one of the robber barons of the 19th century, is buried here. Apparently his father, James Fisk, Senior, lived in Brattleboro and built the Revere House hotel downtown (which burned down in 1877). When Jim Jr was murdered by the new lover of his ex-mistress, the body was brought back to Brattleboro. I thought this sentence on the Lost New England site was interesting: "An estimated 5,000 mourners – equivalent to the entire population of the town at the time – were on hand when his funeral train arrived in town at almost midnight, and his body was brought to the Revere House."

Here's where we got really interested--Jim Fisk, Jr's grave is a monument sculpted by none other than Larkin Goldsmith Meade, Brattleboro's famous son (he was actually born across the river in Chesterfield, NH). Larkin Meade created the "snow angel" on New Year's Eve, 1855 (a marble replica can be seen today in our public library). Meade also carved the first statue of Ceres to top the Vermont state house in Montpelier (his pine version disintegrated by 1930; today there is a third version of Ceres in that spot). And GET THIS, he also designed the tomb of Abraham Lincoln.

So obviously Larkin Meade was the perfect choice to memorialize Jim Fisk, Jr. The monument is in the Prospect Hill Cemetery on South Main Street. It is an obelisk surrounded by 4 female figures that represent different aspects of commerce: railroads, steamboats, finance, and the stage. (Fun fact: Fisk co-owned an opera house in Manhattan.)

west side

Railroads

Steamboats

east side

Cemeteries are a perfect field trip during a pandemic, by the way--social distancing is easy.


On another day we talked about poetry. We discussed simple poetic forms like haiku and limericks. We reviewed six types of poetic "feet" (iamb, trochee, spondee, pyrrhic, dactyl, anapest) and came up with examples of words or phrases for each one.

I read Shakespeare's sonnet #18 (Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day) and we looked at line 9 in particular ("But thy eternal summer shall not fade") as a perfect example of iambic pentameter (10 syllables with stress on every other syllable). If you're not going to click through and read the sonnet, I want to tell you it's where "the darling buds of May" comes from.

We also wrote some of our own poetry, using the theme "summer." Here is a haiku by a participant (with scene drawing from Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets).

turquoise air in earth
lily fern ice breeze melting
summer flowers bloom

BREAKING NEWS: RHUBARB PIE STICKY, DELICIOUS

For baking day this week we made lattice crust "Be-bop a-re-bop Rhubarb Pie," which is a 3-2-1 Michael Ruhlman recipe. This ratio-driven pie crust (3 parts flour to 2 parts butter to 1 part ice water) makes the flakiest, yummiest pie crust ever. I only ever make it once a year when it's rhubarb season.

Before

During

After: yummmmmm

I constructed an "ant moat" to protect the pie from the little ants that come to find anything sweet that might be on our countertop. I filled a wide shallow bowl with water, put an inverted ramekin in the middle, and set the foil-covered pie on the ramekin so the pie is sitting above the water and cannot be crawled on. HA.

Nettlekopita: Nettle hand pies

April/May is nettle season. If you're lucky enough to have nettles in your life, here's a delicious way to use them. Cooked nettles are like a hearty spinach (but even richer and tastier, in my opinion), so I like to use them in place of spinach in Greek-inspired hand pies. I call it "Nettle-kopita."

FLAKY!

The main ingredient is one pound of fresh stinging nettles (Urtica dioica). I harvested these from my beloved nettle patch. I weighed nettles as I harvested. This is what a pound looks like.

Also at the ready is crumbled feta cheese...

Onion and garlic ready to saute, and two friendly eggs...

And only a portion of the melted butter I will end up using.

Ingredients:

1 pound fresh nettles
1 T extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 eggs
1 cup crumbled feta
1 stick butter, melted (more if necessary)
1 pound fillo dough (my package had 13 sheets)
1/2 t dill
1/2 t oregano
1/2 t salt
1/2 t pepper


Preheat oven to 375F.

Steam nettles, then chop.

Once cooked, the nettles have no sting

Ready to chop

Chopped

Saute onion and garlic in extra-virgin olive oil. Add dill and oregano.

In a large bowl, mix crumbled feta with 2 eggs and pepper. Add chopped nettles and the onion-garlic mixture to the feta mixture. Combine. Divide the filling in half in the bowl (just move it apart), then divide that in half so you have 4 sections of filling in the bowl.

Get your pie-making station-ready, which should include a large quantity of melted butter, a pastry brush, and an oiled sheet pan. The main requirement for pie-making is to brush everything with melted butter so it will be flaky and crispy once baked. Also, follow the fillo dough package's instructions for thawing and for keeping the dough from drying out (I did this by covering it with waxed paper every time I removed a new, paper-thin sheet). For each pie, use 1/3 of one of the 4 sections of filling (goal is 12 pies total).

Build the pies. I used one sheet of fillo per pie, but there are other methods and if you know them, feel free to use them!

For each pie, I brushed half a sheet of dough with butter, folded it over, then brushed the top with butter and turned so it was a horizontal rectangle. Next I added the filling a few inches from the edge, folded in the side and the top and bottom edges, brushed with butter, and rolled/flipped the pie toward the far edge, brushing with butter at each fold.  Place finished pies on a sheet pan as you work. If you run out of butter for brushing, melt some more.

I had an odd number of phyllo sheets, so I made a couple of triangular pies that had extra dough in them. When done, make sure everything is buttered on top.

 


Bake for 30 minutes until brown. Let cool a bit before eating. Enjoy!


 


Do you eat nettles? I used to get them at the Brattleboro Farmer's Market (if you go on the right Saturday, once a year) before I started growing my own.

Pandemic Week 7: A Snail's Pace

Does it seem like strange things are happening with time? Work-from-home days seem to stretch into infinity. Fridays are much longer than Tuesdays, and not in a good way. Wednesday and Thursday keep posing as each other. Saturday and Sunday are about 5 minutes long combined. Yet I can't believe it's already May. Is it because my normal cues for the passage of time have been removed? It seems like it's perpetually March, yet somehow almost summer. I am so confused.

Let's capture some action items. Let's align on a clear glide-path. Let's revisit our cadence. Let's do a deep-dive and double-click on that idea and then circle back. Let's reach out and do a gut-check with a temperature-read. Let's get more bandwidth to deliver the ask so we're not out of scope. Let's cover off on that offline. I'll ping you with a heads-up about the inflection point. This is an exciting opportunity to optimize our positioning.

(This #corporatespeak segment brought to you by conference calls at my job and around the nation.)

In non-work life, I picked back up with a daily hour of home-school instruction on topics of my choosing.

On Monday we discussed the etymology of the word "etymology" and that it is not the same as "entomology." Then we chose interesting-looking words from Harry Potter books and researched their word origins, including linguistic roots.

It got cut off in my photo, but I was very interested in the word "shunned" because it was the only one that's not directly a Greek, Latin, French (or German doctor) root. Shunned is from the Old English word "scunian," meaning to avoid out of fear or for self-preservation. (The word is used by Remus Lupin, who as a lycanthrope has been shunned his whole adult life.)

I was also excited about the word "incandescent" (Dolores Umbrage becomes "incandescent with rage"), which when broken down means "to become so heated as to emit white light." It has the same root as the word "candle."  I also learned that Exchequer has the word "Checker" in it on purpose, because in the olden days the royal accountants laid out a green & black checked cloth that helped them track revenue. It was checkered, so the department became the "exchequer." We also noted that the modern word "cheque" is right in the middle, a clue that it's related to money. There is so much packed into our beautiful language!

Tuesday was sunny, so we got out and did some gardening. We measured where our theoretical dwarf peach tree could go, and paced out spots for cucumber, tomatoes, squash, and greens.

Wednesday was also outside. We did some interval training (planks, jumping jacks, squats, crunches, and so forth). Then we played a vigorous game of freeze tag. This is when the person who is "it" tags another player who must freeze in place, but can be unfrozen by the remaining player unless he/she also gets frozen. I learned a new word, which is "puppy-guarding." If you are "it" and you freeze a player, you can't lurk around that player waiting for the other person to come unfreeze them. That is "puppy-guarding" and is not allowed.

Thursday was baking day. It was the least successful one so far. We followed a recipe that called for a box of commercial brownie mix, but the mix was so fudgy that it never set properly. It tastes good though.

In other news, I went to the store this week! I tagged along on one of my spouse's weekly hunting and gathering expeditions. I wore a cloth mask and bought a lot of useless yet satisfying items, like brie, chocolate, and incense cones.

For school, teachers have been sending links to zoo cams. This week my kids watched a tiger snoozing, a burrowing owl brooding, and some penguins getting fed (at the San Diego zoo). They were critical of the giraffe cam, which only showed antelopes.

Penguin feeding time! And an exciting marketing opportunity for Alaska airlines

I'm still learning Gaelic on my phone through duolingo. We are into the underwear portion of the curriculum.

Hello Eilidh! I have underpants on.

Now it's Saturday again and I have a few hours to fit in a whole week's worth of scheming. I wish you luck with whatever it is you're trying to squeeze in or stretch out in these weird times.

Today there are 879 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in my state. The numbers seem to be flattening out, BUT we have also generally not left our homes for 7 weeks. Once things start to open up, will the numbers start to climb again?  I took this screenshot on Thursday, April 30, and I'm not even sure what it means.