Dandelion Days

Posted on April 26, 2016 by pujakins

dandilionforwishing The first flowers I remember picking were dandelions. Proudly I brought them to my mother, who lovingly thanked me. I have memories of making dandelion flower crowns with her. We’d slit the stems, slide a flower through, and repeat until the crown or wreath was large enough to wear. Dandelions are the first flowers many children are allowed to pick. They are such pretty little bright spots, and unbeknownst to many, such good medicine It seems a pity that people feel they have to eliminate them.

Those who want pristine green lawns eradicate dandelions, never realizing that instead of poisoning these cheerful yellow suns, they could pick them and make a wine that tastes of summer, a bread, or other baked goods, or use the leaves in a salad, a stir fry or combined with other greens in a juicer. Dandelion leaves have excellent food value, and are a healthy, desirable spring vegetable. The roasted, ground roots make a coffee like drink.

Children love the yellow flowers; parents faced with eliminating stains from the milky juice, not so much. Homeowners might like to know the long roots actually benefit the lawn: they aerate the soil, keeping it from becoming compacted and unable to absorb nutrients. Susun Weed says there is enough vitamin A in a dandelion leaf to rival store supplements. As well there is vitamin C and many helpful minerals. It is also a mild, effective natural diuretic. If your lawn is away from the road, you can safely use your dandelions many ways.

Here is my recipe for Dandelion Deluxe: Ingredients: ½ cup chopped onion, 4 cloves of garlic minced or chopped fine, 1 small summer squash chopped small, 4 cups dandelion greens, olive oil. Method: Prepare greens while you sauté onion, garlic and summer squash in a olive oil. Remove roots and tough bottom stems. Wash very well. Cut up with scissors. Steam in a small amount of water until they wilt down. Strain water and set aside. Add chopped greens to sautéed vegetables and cook until stems are tender. You serve as is or you can mingle into your food processor for a different taste. Drink the healthy cooking water, your body will thank you.

Dandelion Wine: Age for at least 6 months. It will continue to mellow. Ingredients: 1 Qt Dandelions, yellow part only. 4 Qts. boiling water, 3 Lemons, 3 oranges, 4 Lbs sugar, 1 Pkg. yeast. Method: Pour boiling water over blossoms, set for 24 hours in a warm place. Slice fruit and remove seeds. Cover with sugar; set for 24 hrs also. Then strain blossoms and pour liquid over oranges and lemons. Add 1 package any yeast. Pour into ceramic or stainless steel. Let stand 4 or 5 days. Strain, let stand one more day. Bottle, then cap with small balloons. Leave until the wine stops “working” and balloons collapse. Cork and store 6 months or more. Then sip. It tastes like summer. Recipe makes 5 bottles.

Tasha Halpert

The Three Bite Rule

Posted on March 14, 2016 by pujakins

When I was growing up there was no such thing in my family as not eating what was put before you, or of getting up from the table before you had finished what was on your plate. The “starving children in China” statement was applied whenever I protested. I learned to swallow pieces of liver as if they were pills, with gulps of milk. However I was unable to cope well with the frequent soft boiled eggs, and finally my mother stopped giving them to me. I have memories of sitting at the table staring at the egg in its shell in the egg cup in front of me. That was one battle I won. Not until I was an adult did I learn to like soft boiled eggs and I never did learn to appreciate liver.

My mother built her cooking around my dad’s taste, so much of what we ate was pretty standard. She believed in providing nutritious food, and though plain, it was. Despite the fact that she really didn’t like to cook, she understood that providing nourishment is an important aspect of caring that nature has built into mothers, and she did her best. All too often family members, like me as a child, do not express appreciation for the family cook’s labors in the kitchen. Though it didn’t occur to me as a child, as an adult I personally think they might be grateful someone has taken the trouble to make a meal for them to eat.

As regular readers of my column know, I have always enjoyed cooking. I find it satisfying as well as enjoyable. One aspect of this is that I prefer to prepare meals from scratch. Some might be surprised to learn I don’t own a microwave, nor do I wish to. I even like chopping food by hand rather than using a machine, peeling my fruit and vegetables, and doing all the hands on work that is required to use completely fresh ingredients rather than prepackaged ones. I do not claim that this is particularly virtuous on my part. It is simply my preference.

This is because putting myself into the meal is part of my joy in the creation of it. My energy goes directly into the chopping, the peeling, the mixing and the stirring. This is my purposeful contribution to the health and welfare of those I love and fix food for. I am fortunate to have an appreciative husband who enjoys whatever I prepare. I had one once who wasn’t and his influence on our younger children made quite a difference in what they were willing to eat. He was a meat and potatoes man and we were on a casserole budget, so complaints were often made. Yet being hungry he still ate whatever it was.

I tried to make interesting meals, and I used to tell my children they had to eat three bites of whatever I served them or I would make them eat the whole thing. Fortunately young children are not logical and none of them ever figured out how if they wouldn’t eat three bites, how could I get them to eat the whole thing? I even did this with their playmates and guests. Today one of my delights is to introduce people to foods they may not have experienced–at least not the way I prepare it. However, I don’t tell them they must eat three bites or I’ll make them eat the whole thing.

Tasha Halpert

Salad and casserole 3

And God Bless the Caterpillars by Tasha Halpert

Posted on September 9, 2015 by pujakins

And God Bless the Caterpillars

My dandelion headed five-year-old is saying his prayers. He includes the caterpillars in their jars on the window sill. We had filled the jar with what we hoped was the appropriate leaves for food and twigs to climb, and each night we prayed for them. The time was 1968, and my son was one of five, active bright friendly loving children.

The caterpillars munched, spun cocoons on the twigs, and were quiet. We waited in vain for butterflies to emerge. Together we concluded that caterpillars did not do well in captivity and perhaps it was better for them to go free. Lessons on many levels were learned from the experience. I don’t know whether my son remembers the caterpillars, but he is now a grown man with a strong sense of curiosity, a fine capacity for observation and a desire to do some good in the world. The eager child lives on in the man.

One day the family visited someone who had guinea pigs. Naturally the children were fascinated and the pet shop that sold us our first pair agreed to buy back progeny. I was delighted at the opportunity to give the children a first hand lesson in biology, and all went well until we elected to do a breeding experiment. Unfortunately our breeding program coincided with a glut of guinea pigs at the pet shop. My living room filled up with boxes holding a total of fifteen furry squeakers and any time the refrigerator door opened, a chorus of squeals filled the house.

In the process my oldest daughters found out first hand that one cannot always rely on original solutions but must plan for contingencies, and of course they had graphic experience in where babies come from! Now that they have had their own children, they have fostered the same sense of adventure in their offspring and have carried on the same love affair with nature.

Nature is a great teacher of many things, and the care with which it is arranged has a significant message for us. We are part of the cycles of emergence, growth, and return to the whole. We circulate life energy the way a tree does. Once we believed we were in charge but this conviction is eroding with our recognition of the results of that belief. Our attunement to the part we play in the natural order of life seems to me to be more important than ever to our growth as healthy, positive human beings.

Parenting seems best learned by experience. Children are resilient. With goodwill, grace and good luck most of us will succeed in raising well adjusted children. Doing what we most enjoyed with our youngsters often results in happiness for all, but observing and participating in the processes of nature can easily and quickly return us to the joys of childhood as well as bring us pleasure in the present.

Looking together at snowflake crystals, searching for seashells, tenderly weeding small gardens—the days of my companionship with my children are cherished memories. I learned as much from them as they did from me. Nature is a great teacher and I am grateful to her for the lessons I learned as well as the beauty I have received. I am proud, too, of my children for their positive attitudes and approach to life, much of which was learned at Mother Nature’s knee. And I say with my son, God bless the caterpillars, God bless them all.

Thinking Of My Mother by Tasha Halpert

Posted on May 10, 2015 by pujakins

It makes me happy that there is a day set aside each year to be devoted to acknowledging mothers. The folderol that has grown up surrounding it is a product of the commercialism with which we are surrounded. Most mothers would probably be glad to do without the obligatory dinner out at a restaurant jammed with other families setting out to treat her to a meal she does not have to cook, or the trinkets she has to find a place to put on her crowded bureau.

To me what is more important is that Mothers’ day serves as a reminder that much of what mothers do all year round is usually taken for granted by their children. This ranges from the daily meals and laundry to the cleaning and tidying that goes with looking after a family. Trust me, I’m not complaining here, actually I’m thinking of my own mom and how much of what she did that I took for granted as I was growing up.

Of course she provided meals and did what she could to keep up a household with four children and a husband who was not inclined to help with housework. She wouldn’t let him cook because she said he burnt things and she intensely disliked wasting food. What she did do, personally for me, is more to the point in my memory.

She helped me with my homework, especially anything to do with languages. She worked hard to drill a proper French accent into me, and she faithfully reviewed my vocabulary and grammar lessons as well. She endured my piano practice as best she could. A trained musician with a perfect ear, I know that she cringed through my practice, and she quickly acquiesced when I said I didn’t want to take lessons any more.

When as a teenager I needed to reduce my weight she carefully counted my calories and helped me lose fifteen pounds two summers in a row. I remember that she did despair, Nor did she complain when I gained back most of what I had lost living at my grandmother’s, but set simply about doing it again. My robust grandmother did not count calories and she ate four good meals a day including tea with English muffins and home made cookies or cake.

My mother certainly tried hard to do the best she could for me. Often she went without to make sure I had what I needed. As I remember, at the time, I did not appreciate my mother’s efforts. I grew to understand how valuable they were once I had children of my own. It is truly said that one cannot fully appreciate what a parent goes through until one becomes one. I miss her. The four years since she breathed her last have sped by. I think of her often. Sometimes I feel her presence just as though she is with me, only in another room yet still within hearing distance.