James Beard hits Walmart

For change of pace, here's our Mother's Day lunch at the Modern in New York, our son here giving me the best Mother's Day gift I could ever wish for: a peaceful lunch with my husband, liverwurst, tarte flambee and a fine glass of gruner veltliner.

(Who says germanic food is boring? That mustard was spicy! And the tarte was sublime.)

We were in New York for the James Beard Awards, as I was nominated (and then, unbelievably, won!) for a series of features with recipes I wrote for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. And if that weren't the cake and its icing too, I am pictured here still drifting on the nimbus mist from a month previous, when I sold two books (a midwestern cookbook and a narrative with recipes to follow) to Clarkson Potter--an outcome for my cookbook proposal so thrilling that it jumped the daydream. The germ of this midwestern cookbook started growing about fifteen years ago when we were living in this cabin, back when it was rustic and my evening reading was lit by oil lamp; it percolated the whole time I lived and cooked professionally in New York, and then it required about six months-worth of figuring out how to translate my blunt, overwhelming love for the midwest and its cuisine into something that anyone, midwestern or not, could consume. But I finally found the track, and the project has begun. 

I really don't know how to justify this flood of good fortune except to say that I have always been good at bingo, a fact which might have finally rubbed off into other areas of my life. (And, possibly, that my isolation here on the hill has turned up my focus in a productive way.)

Coming home to Two Inlets from the awards in New York I thought, you know, it's pretty cool to live in this small town in northern Minnesota where only a few people know what the heck a James Beard Award is, and most of those due to the piece about the win that the local paper ran on the bottom of its front page.

In some ways the local article means more than the Publisher's Weekly notice, because I've long known that if something appears in the Park Rapids Enterprise, it is real. And to prove it, I have the receipts: friends and regulars from my cooking classes have been sending the sweetest notecards from whose folds fall the clippings about me--sometimes laminated, sometimes loose--delicate gray leaves falling into my lap, flooding me with the hope that I will one day be as thoughtful and generous as these lovely people.

It's also worth noting that of those who congratulate me on the book or the award, about half of them are gently poking fun at me, as we do in small towns to people who gain exposure from the outside. Implicit in a small community is the shared understanding that people and relationships matter more than accomplishments--a principle I subscribe to, too. Don't get me wrong, people around here honestly think the accolades are great, but they also find it funny and surreal that I am getting credit or payment for what I do all day long, which to them looks like ridiculously frequent grocery shopping, some browsing at Rich's Antiques (prop-hunting!), and a whole lot of sitting in front of the computer in the solarium at Bella Cafe, or, computer on my lap, boots propped in front of the fake fire at Jack Pine Java. (Of course they're not privy to the constant cooking, or the late-night deadlines.) To them, it's a miracle I get paid for that, much less bring home stinkin' awards. This irony is worth a couple of dramatic bow-downs upon my entrance to Bella, which I've graciously accepted.

As for James Beard in Walmart, which I promised: So at Walmart yesterday we ran into our friend Ray who works in the photo department. An ambitious home cook, Ray really understands the significance of both the book and the JBA, and was congratulating me and all that as we walked toward the toy section. My kid pulled a pink styrofoam pool noodle from the aisle-end stack and started swinging. My husband pulled another, Ray another, and as we talked they all had a good three way thromp. A good hit to the butt sent our kid into hysteric giggles. (You gotta love an good impromptu noodle fight.) A guy wearing a Walmart polo showed up, joined the conversation, nodded at me, offered his mild, sincere congratulations and then said, "Hey Ray, can you come and help this guy with a TV?"  The guy, standing shotgun, was wearing cowboy boots, belted gardening jeans, a two-day beard and a worn embroidered cap. He had the insouciance that affects most of the people who live in rural acreages around here, the lingering self-possession of the pioneers. And he said, "No kidding. That's great. James Beard . . . did you know that James Beard was an opera singer before he did the food thing? Wagnerian. Don't know if he was any good at that or not."

And with a quick salute he turned and followed Ray to go pick out his TV. Sir, I wish I had been more quick-on-the-draw with my manners enough to ask your name. I did not know that about James Beard.

It just goes to show that here, due in part to the dressed-down dress code, or maybe because these isolated forest pocket places attract some pretty singular folks, you can never guess who it is you're talking to. A shared love for this patch of country equalizes this town. I grew up here and have been coming and going from this place for a long time, but this one fact still interests and amazes me.

Water from Trees

It took a long time for summer to arrive but the other day it finally stormed in, installing the heat and the greenery in a single day. 

And to think, just two weeks ago I was still dodging snow clumps. The days were warming but the nights were still cold, and the birch sap was beginning to run from the trees. We lived in a truly gray landscape. My husband took some photos of the bare trees against the sky, threw them into iphoto, and when he toggled between color and black-and-white we could hardly tell the difference between them.

Just look at the glass of birch water I'm holding: colorless and pure, it is the talisman of the dramatic week between Minnesota winter and Minnesota summer, a charged sliver of time in which nature drains all the color from the sky, gathering energy so that it can pounce into the next phase, like how a cat coils before jumping up onto a high couch. In places with more gradual seasonal shifts they call this interval "spring."

So you might say, "that's a mighty big glass of birch sap you've poured yourself!" To which I respond, "Yes. I plan to replace all of the water in my body with birch sap." I read a Times piece once about Korean people who drink five gallons of fresh maple sap at a time with the goal of driving all the winter toxins out of their body, and every year that is my plan, but I can usually only drink two glasses a day.

This year on the first day of birch tapping I downed three glasses fast but then I felt a little funny inside--a strange inner vibration--as one might after chugging three glasses of anything. Or maybe there's a little unidentified something-something in this birch sap. It tastes pretty plain, like clean water with a dropper of maple syrup stirred in, but there's also a slightly unsettling woodsy undertone, as if you were drinking it not from a glass but from a dug-out birch mug--freshly hewn for you by an elf. In any case, I consider two glasses per day sufficient for a spring tonic.

Most years birch trees begin their run about 10 days to 2 weeks after maple sugaring, and this year was no different. To check the sap, we let the little guy drill the first hole.

Sure enough, it dribbled out immediately. We hooked up blue plastic bags to each tap. They don't look as romantically old-school as metal buckets but I think they're a little more sanitary. During the second night the temperature dropped well below freezing and the birch sap froze solid in the bags, ran over, and drooled icicles.

But then it warmed up and the sap ran freely again and we continued boiling it down, which is definitely an outside operation. Keep in mind that while it takes 40 gallons of maple sap to make 1 gallon of syrup, it takes 60 gallons of birch sap to make the same amount of syrup. Birch sap is thinner and less sugary than maple sap, making it all the more precious. It tastes very similar, but again, a bit woodsier on the finish. I think it's more interesting-tasting than maple syrup, but that may be because I'm more accustomed to maple. In terms of quality they're on par with each other.

As befits any authentic sap-boiling operation, we have a hackneyed rural set up: my outdoor wok burner (one of my best cooking purchases ever) set up on my father-in-law's childhood red wagon, a propane tank for powering it, a strainer for sieving out bits of blown-in wood bits, and a useful stump stool.

When the syrup turned amber-colored I brought it inside and strained it once more into a wide-bottomed saucepan. Then I boiled it again until the bubbles grew larger and it foamed up vigorously when stirred. That little spurt of energy when touched was a pretty good indicator of doneness. I let it cool and then poured it into sterilized jars. From the countless gallons of birch sap we harvested this year we yielded about 5 pints of syrup.

I'd like to make custards with this, and ice cream, but for now I've been stirring a little of it into my salad dressings, and into cold, local whole milk (yum, maybe the best), and I can't resist a little birch and banana snack. A quick bowl of banana-snack is something I only eat when I'm alone, usually with half a mind on it. The birch syrup makes it a little more intentional.