LUNCH: leek-potato soup with chive oil

The leeks were the last fresh thing I pulled up from my garden two weeks ago, and I vowed then to do it earlier next year because my hands were caked with wet black dirt and sluggish from the cold. (The cooling trend didn't reverse: It's 1 degree F. today.)

For lunch today I wanted to use them up, but frankly I'm a little sick of leeks in vinaigrette, and potato-leek gratin, and potato-leek soup.

In a gush of mad creativity, I thought "what about leek-potato soup?" It sounds like a brainstorm you'd hear from a three-year-old, but when pushed to its limits, and with the addition of some of the chive oil I made and froze in September, this soup managed to squeeze one more facet out of plain old potato soup. It tastes profoundly of fresh leek (the chive oil really helps) and more like summer than winter, which is a welcome change.

(dirty garden fingerlings)

Just after adding the potatoes to the stockpot, a little northern drama arose. Aaron had said that he was going to go to the little pond to skate and I said, Okay, okay, not thinking much of it, busy editing something and thinking of soup. After an hour passed, I called his cell, which went to message. I started to get scared, envisioning him falling through the newly-frozen ice. (We've only had a week of low temperatures--how thick could it be?) I'll just add the chicken stock, I thought and put the soup on the diffuser on low. Wait, but it would be so much better with garlic. I grabbed a couple and then had a moment of self-scathing doubt: "you're adding garlic to the soup when he could be freezing from hypothermia?"

What happened next tells the story of my obsession better than anything I could ever write.

Get Your Ducks in a Row

Here it is, Midwestern Bounty. Or, Food for the Hard Times, which may be coming our way.

Aaron's Grandma Irene saved this picture to give to me. It was taken in the basement of her house in Grand Island, Nebraska, probably circa the 1970's. You can almost feel the coolness of the basement and the insistent, bright heat trying to muscle its way in through the window. Not everyone knows this, but it can be ungodly hot in the middle plains states in September.

But the thing that strikes me about the photo, after the sheer volume of jars and all the hard work it took to fill them, is the inevitable homogeneity of the winter table. After all, this is a family of three we're talking about here. That's a lot of applesauce! Daily applesauce, I'd say. And twice-weekly carrots.

Buckcakes

As the sound of a distant gun shot recedes from hearing, I am reminded again that we are living through the fourth day of Minnesota firearms deer opener. We keep our fingers crossed: The baby wears a bright orange hat, when he's not yanking it down in frustration.

Signs of the season are everywhere: big trucks, their drivers seemingly gripped by buck fever (hopefully not by beer) make three point turns right in the middle of the highway; you can spot discarded hunting orange knit hats crumpled in the crease of nearly every dashboard; and more literally, the dead deer strapped to roof racks pile up at the Two Inlets Country Store. The hunky iron scale sitting outside the store wears dots of blood.

But there are sweeter notes to this deer hunting thing. Yesterday I passed my neighbor's 13-year old daughter as she stood on the road at the top of the creek bank, drowning in a men's small orange camo jacket. She held her oversized rifle safely, hands at 10 and 2. We exchanged a few words, a few laughs, she shifted from foot to foot, and she seemed under the completely normal spell of middle-school bashfulness. I left daydreaming about how it would dissipate when it came time for her to pull the trigger, and about the resoluteness she'd need to put her knife to its warm belly and the lack of squeamishness she'd need to yank out its guts.

I guess sweetness needs to be tempered. And no one around here seems to see the incongruity of baked goods that commemorate a mass execution. Deer cookies are everywhere, their heavily frosted faces looking suspiciously like Bullwinkle to me. Hank savored his "co-coo" the other day fully, identifying the eyes before chomping them.

Today the Menahga Bakery, a tiny but warm-blooded coffee house at the front of a cavernous but cozy old-fashioned bakery, featured deer and gun cupcakes. They also sell finnish flatbreads and cardamom breads and danishes of all sorts to a faithful crowd--mostly finns from the area, but also some interlopers and locals like us who drive 20 miles out of our way just to swing through Menahga for a little sweet.

Like a couple of leisurely retired people we hemmed and hawed over our choices, as if these were the last doughnuts we'd ever eat. In a last-minute change of heart I went back to basics, picking out the cupcakes and a plain cake doughnut. Aaron chose a cream-filled, chocolate-glazed raised doughnut. I fished mine out of the box when we got in the car and it was still WARM and the nooks still held droplets of fat. I made the right choice, but now the cupcakes are starting to call me.