Wordless Wednesday 5

Measuring Weather

According to the weather report, ten centimeters of snow will have accumulated before spring technically arrives tomorrow. The hardy, winter-loving residents of central Ontario don't care. We were not fooled by last week's teasing sunshine and mud--March is the muddiest month--nor downcast when the snow returned last night along with high winds and, for an hour or so, freezing rain pellets. I finally understand that odious weather-branding phrase: "wintry mix".

Mid-March is when I always want to pack the winter gear away. I did that once, only to unpack it again. We still need our boots and mitts and scarves and parkas. My husband shoveled the driveway this morning, but only the road end where plows had left the packiest, dirtiest, heaviest snow of the season. I said, "Why don't you leave it? It'll melt," to which he replied, "Come on, it's March." His father never stopped shoveling until April. That was a personal rule: unless it's April, get out there buddy.

My children were hoping for a snow day this morning, even though they've just returned from March break and have already enjoyed more freebie days off school than anyone can remember happening in a single year. Unfortunately for them, the buses rolled. 

Here's what the kids created on the last snow day.

Some will have seen this photo already, but I like it so much I've entered it in The Great Snowman Challenge. You, too, can "like" it on Ontario Travel's Facebook page if you feel inclined to active liking. Too bad I uploaded the photo sideways to the contest page . . . but still, it stands out among the others, I think. There are snowdogs, a snowbunny, and a snowman doing a headstand, but no other snowkayakers. (Notice the green river of lawn on which our intrepid boater floats? That's the path my husband forged with the snow blower; it leads to our compost bin. We live such romantic lives here at the homestead, what with perpetual snow removal and the daily schlepping of vegetable waste.)

Most of Canada is colder than most of the USA, most of the time. That's a geographic fact. Also, it's psychologically colder here, if only because of the metric system. (This post will not address the temperature of national personalities; let's just stick to weather, my friends.) When American relatives shiver through a brutal 20˚F afternoon, I can report that we're in minus territory: -7˚C! Negative numbers seem worse. Similarly, today's snowy centimeters sound like a bigger deal than their imperial equivalent of four inches.

Metric measurement confers bragging rights, but the reality is that Canadian kids run around all winter with their coats unzipped no matter what the thermometer reads. Today was relatively balmy, at -2˚C (30 whole degrees F), and I saw a guy wearing shorts and Crocs, shoveling his walk. In yoga class, the instructor gestured at the large studio window and offered the fanciful notion that the heat we generated (it was power yoga, an oxymoron if ever there was one) might be enough to melt the snow. Everyone held the ironic smile pose while preparing to move into a salute to the sun. Outside the window, snowflakes swirled, and a daycare worker pushed a jumbo stroller across the white landscape, giving her babies a turn in the fresh air. I practiced a balancing pose (I'm a tree, I'm a tree) and marveled at the sight. 

How's spring treating you? 

Be Not Offended: Images

First things first: Happy St. Patrick's Day (late now that I've had some technical difficulties posting this). The Bizarro comic can be found here along with an amusing holiday post from 2012 entitled "Drunk Driving Reptiles" by Dan Piraro, genius cartoonist.
 
Many Catholics are no doubt seizing the opportunity to drink, since Sundays provide a free pass releasing the devout from whatever form of Lenten discipline seemed like such a good idea back on Ash Wednesday. Add a saint's feast day to the mix and you've got double prizes. Another reason to opt for alcoholic oblivion, of course, is the saturation media coverage we've endured this week about the election of Pope Francis.

Wasn't it awful? Wasn't it fabulous? I'm feeling whipsawed by the competing images of the former Cardinal Bergoglio of Argentina, now Pope Francis. The mainstream media generally ignore everything the Pope has to say (unless it has to do with scandals) but cannot resist the spectacle in Rome: the antiquated charm of smoke signals, pomp and pageantry, tourists and faithful alike rushing to St. Peter's Square to hear the new leader's first words. It's a cultural happening, meaning that even the non-religious are attracted, especially when the chosen one appears in simple garments and invokes Saint Francis of Assisi, who renounced his family's wealth for a life serving the poor. Maybe this new pope will sell some art, we can be forgiven for thinking.

It's worth remembering the 2009 Encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, or "Charity in Truth", which critiqued the excesses of capitalism as a cause of human poverty and misery. Moreover, the Catechism states: 

2439. Rich nations have a grave moral responsibility toward those which are unable to ensure the means of their development by themselves or have been prevented from doing so by tragic historical events. It is a duty in solidarity and charity; it is also an obligation in justice if the prosperity of the rich nations has come from resources that have not been paid for fairly.

Pope Benedict was elected in 2005. This week, amidst the online tug-of war, I found myself wondering how the message of his elevation was received and circulated among virtual "communities" of the time. Certainly the Internet was in full swing eight years ago, but Facebook, established just the year before, was still the playground of college kids. Twitter didn't exist yet. Nor were clutches of cardinals trying to hold press conferences, surely.

There's no need to take the temperature of the Internet today: the weather's perpetually blistering. A place--a space--of  fevered attack and counterattack, on bad days the Internet could be our newest metaphor for Hell. Among the many, many photos and comments circulating, three struck me hard.

Exhibit 1:

This undated photo shows the organization Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo protesting in the hope of finding loved ones lost to atrocities committed during Argentina's Dirty War. The sign says, "Where are the hundreds of babies born in captivity?", referring to infants born to jailed dissidents, stolen and given to families loyal to the military dictatorship then in power.    

The caption that went with the picture (posted on Facebook) attributed the following statement (my translation) to this group: "The church that collaborated with the dictatorship, that lied, that turned its back on us, is the church of Bergoglio and the right."

It is impossible not to feel the suffering of these women, and the questions raised about official church complicity--leaving aside for now Cardinal Bergoglio's individual role, which has been investigated--are troubling indeed. This NYT report gives some useful background information and seems fairly balanced.

And I'm reminded of a powerful Argentine film that dramatizes the plight of a stolen child and her adoptive family. The Official Story won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film of 1986. It's available on YouTube in its entirety here.

Exhibit 2: 

Another photo, which I've chosen not to reproduce, shows then-Cardinal Bergoglio giving communion to General Videla. The image has been altered with red spatters meant to represent blood. The caption states: "The future Pope giving communion to General Videla, the leader of the fascist generals who ruled Argentina in the late 1970s (and disappeared more than 20,000)."

I find it disturbing for its crude and lazy sloganeering. Equating giving communion--the essence of a priest's existence, after all--with political conspiracy shows, at best, a lack of understanding of the basic tenets of the religion in question. This image undermines its own tragic cause, and that is a shame.

Exhibit 3:

Finally, this undated photo of Pope John Paul II with then-Cardinal Ratzinger (later to become Pope Benedict XVI) and then-Cardinal Bergoglio, found here. The caption claims that this is a rare photograph of Pope JPII and his two successors together, and further commentary suggested that the existence of this particular image amounts to some kind of divine foreshadowing. That's probably when I should have stopped reading and looking, because my bullshit meter hasn't stopped spinning yet.

As a record of a moment in history, fine. But do not cardinals flock together? What I can't abide is when the church acts like a government. Official photographs of every significant meeting must exist. I'm willing to bet that the Vatican archives are stuffed with photos of popes posing with individual cardinals and various permutations thereof. If someone else had been elected, another photo would have been discovered.

Pope Francis has a daunting task ahead of him and only time, not instant images doctored and zapped around the Internet, will reveal who he is. Those who can pray should.

Made/Learned Today

I was a hyper-productive cook today. Here's the tally of unprocessed goodness:

• granola, 1 batch (this amount seems to last us for a week)
• oatmeal-cranberry muffins, 2 dozen (intended 1/2 for freezer, but too many eaten)
• bread, 4 loaves
• granola/chocolate chip bars, 1 tray = 40 squares (1/2 for freezer); turned out perfectly until I accidentally lit a burner underneath the cooling pan, scorching a few. Rescued in time to save most. This recipe came from the Obscure Canlit Mama blog and so did the recipe for bread--both are foolproof. The kids love the granola bars, except when burned by the resident fool. 
• lasagna, 1 pan

This afternoon my daughter the gardener and I went to the Seedy Sunday event in Peterborough, where we learned quite a bit about organic gardening and composting. Turns out we've been doing a few things right--inter-planting basil with tomatoes, for example. Also, I was heartened when the presenter announced, "A messy garden is a healthier garden" than a grid of weedless perfection. Haven't I been saying so all along? Yay for chaos.

We also learned that our compost needs amping up. Hence the $15 carton of red wriggly WORMS that we brought home in the hope of achieving high-test dirt. Believe it or not, these invertebrates require tending. They are to be kept inside until it is warm enough to transfer them to their new home in our compost barrel. They need watering--not too much and not too little--and if they try to escape, the moisture level is not to their liking. They must be fed (eggshells, coffee grounds, fruit peelings). They have to breathe, too, so my daughter drilled holes in the top of the plastic bin that will be their home until spring. It doesn't bear thinking about. This is not my project.

Seeds purchased:

Tomatoes--Mixed Heirloom (many different sizes and colours) and Stupice ("classic red round tomatoes")
Beans--Gold Rush and Strike
Beets--Mixed Colours (to entice beet-hating youngsters)
Carrots--Scarlet Nantes
Greens--Winter Density Romaine Lettuce and Mixed Mesclun

I wish I had recorded more names of the different varieties, even if we couldn't buy them all. The names are full of promise.

Seedy Sunday--March 10

Gardeners, get ready. It's time to buy seeds, which can only mean that spring is almost here. Seedy Sunday (this weekend!) brings together a wide range of vendors, and this year two workshops will be offered: 1) how to save seeds and 2) organic gardening and composting. Free, all free! Note the friendly sponsorship by Peterborough Community Garden Network and the City of Peterborough. Thank you, sponsors. Full details are found HERE.



I came home from this event last year with far too many seeds and, based on nearly 100% germination, I'd say they were better seeds than you can buy elsewhere. Not to mention a wider range of seeds, and that is the point of this exercise: biodiversity. On Seedy Sunday, you will find seed for heirloom varieties of fruits and vegetables that have all but disappeared from the marketplace. The people behind this event are not only hobbyists, therefore, but quietly heroic, keeping alive a tradition and shoring up our food supply against myriad threats.

In my family, we are hapless gardeners: good at planting, bad at maintaining, terrible at record-keeping. We don't really know what we're doing. Every year we say it's too much work for too little/uncertain gain; let's just buy from the farmer's market. But there's something elemental about digging in the dirt, something deeply satisfying about picking the ingredients for a salad right before you make it. To varying degrees, our kids love the garden. I don't think they would let us abandon it.

Last year, my son planted melon seeds in a milk carton on his windowsill and later tranpslanted them outdoors. It actually worked--in cold Ontario we grew melons, tiny but edible. I started several varieties of tomatoes, peppers and basil in flats next to a sunny window and ended up with a surplus, so I gave away a bunch of seedlings. Only problem? I didn't label anything. I probably didn't even plant them in any logical order. I must have thought it would be fun to play "guess the tomato" as the plants grew, undisciplined, into lush, fragrant vines. And it was kind of fun, because rows are boring. I learned to distinguish among the sizes, shapes and colours of leaves. The Green Zebra variety, which produces a green tomato with yellow stripes--how fun is that?--is an especially beautiful plant, with broad-leafed, velvety foliage that verges on blue-green.

At Seedy Sunday, I'm bound to find something new for this year's garden.

Beet-green Pizza

Last year our garden produced a bumper crop of beets, although they were stunted specimens, hardly worth peeling. Maybe they underperformed because I kept picking the greens for salads. In any event, neither roots nor tops looked anything like the beets for sale at local farmstands and stores. So when I saw some Texas-sized beets on special this week--and yes, they were from Texas, an inconvenient truth--I bought two bunches.

Beets are the most reviled vegetable in this house. No one eats them willingly except for one older child, recently converted, and me. No matter. I roasted the beets and then set my son to work chopping the greens for a stuffed pizza. He was bored out of his skull, so give him a knife, right? Plus, I secretly hoped that preparing the food might lead him to eating it. So far, no.     

Perhaps not many people know about beet-green pizza. My great-grandmother Elizabeth Possemato often made this dish, and several Possemato relatives continue the tradition. While not a childhood favourite of mine--beet-green pizza is an acquired taste, like olives and coffee--at some point I decided to try making it myself.

She wrote out the recipe for me when I was a teenager. What is the Internet for if not to share a treasured artifact? I can't get a clear enough photograph to render the recipe legible (no worries, it's typed in below) but I love her wobbly script and syntax. Reading her handwriting makes me feel like I'm back in her kitchen, watching the goings on from my perch on a tall chrome stool topped with a slippery red vinyl seat. 

Elizabeth Possemato, a strong, devout and hardworking woman, supported her large family after being widowed young. She lived long and well, an inspiration to many. Compared to the rest of the family, I spent very little time with her; this post in no way does justice to her memory, but certain details stick in my mind. In her late eighties she attended my wedding, traveling with family members. At the reception, she told people that the trip marked the first time she had ever stayed in a hotel room, and also the first time she had eaten potato chips. Which shows her openness to life, I think.

Beet Greens and Dressing
Mix together :
2 qts beet leaves, chopped (drain in a colander first)
1 tsp salt
1/4 c. "salad oil" (I use olive)
2 tsp paprika
1 tbsp dried mint (optional--I omit this)
1/8 tsp black pepper
2 cloves garlic chopped fine
1/2 c. seedless raisins (optional--I omit this as well, preferring to keep the greens savoury)

Roll out pizza dough (use any homemade or other version you like), cover one side with beet-green filling, fold dough in half and seal around the edges. Cut slits in the top. Bake about 1 hour at 350 degrees, or until crust is done. The result is complex--slightly bitter and satisfying.

My great-grandmother's recipe is a time capsule in more ways than one. See where she wrote "over" at the bottom of the page? This message appears on the flip side: "We don't get beet leaves here until May and June." Now, of course, we do.