Month: January 2022

Mozart’s Starling and Bird Song!

Buckley Dunton Lake- October Mountain State Park Beckett, MA

It’s cold out there!!

What better time to write about birds and their elegant and exquisite songs to get us through this stretch of winter and to help harbor thoughts of spring!

I start with my own talented little Cockatiel Lucy, who learned to sing a snippet from the Mozart Clarinet Quintet when he was a baby!

I was delighted to discover that my little genius was in good company with no less than a starling that was Mozart’s dear pet! I have been reading a charming book; Mozart’s Starling written by eco philosopher and naturalist Lyanda Lynn Haupt.

Today, starlings are considered to be nuisance birds; a species that is aggressive and invasive. In Mozart’s time, starlings were endearing and delightful household pets.

In her book, Lyanda Lynn Haupt describes a beloved starling that Mozart bought in a pet shop in Vienna in 1784. The story goes that as Mozart entered the store, the starling sang a snippet from a piano concerto that Mozart had completed a few months before but was yet to be performed in public! He ended up purchasing the bird, naming it Vogelstar, which means starling in German. He became so attached to his pet, that when it passed away 3 years later, he held a small funeral for Vogelstar and wrote a short elegy:

Here rests a beloved fool,
A starling bird.
Still in his prime
did he experience
the bitter pain of death.
My heart bleeds
when I think about it.
Oh, reader! Shed a tear for him.
[…]
I bet he is up above
to praise me
without payment
for this act of friendship.
Since while he, unsuspecting,
bled to death
he thought not at all of the man
who can write such good rhymes as these.

Countless works have been composed that depict bird song and much has been written about the practical use of bird song. Is it for the creation and defense of territory, declaring sexual maturity and attracting a mate or simply beautiful music? When we are treated to the throaty and lyrical song of a wood thrush as dusk falls at the end of a long summer day, I prefer to think of the latter!

Wood Thrush-Kathy Porter (C)- Mass Audubon

The talented young composer Alexander Liebermann has transcribed intricate and complicated birdsongs into musical notation. In this video, you can follow the complex rhythm and remarkable pitch of a thrush nightingale!

Coming back inside from the bracing cold calls for comfort food and Chicken Potpie Cornbread Muffins fit the bill! I adapted this dish from a recipe written by Scott Hocker from a recent Food and Wine Magazine article. What can be better than both chicken potpie and cornbread muffins; in one meal! The house smelled heavenly as they baked and they were delicious for dinner along with a green mesclun salad with slices of pear, chunks of parmesan cheese and toasted pecans.

Chicken Potpie Cornbread Muffins

Ingredients

Cornbread:

  • 1 1/2 cups cornmeal
  • 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
  • 3/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 1/2 cups unsweetened soy or almond milk

Filling:

  • 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1 small onion, chopped finely
  • 1 small celery, cut into medium dice
  • 1 small carrot, cut into medium dice
  • 4-5 mushrooms cut into small pieces
  • 1/3 cup frozen peas defrosted
  • Kosher salt to taste
  • Freshly ground black pepper to taste
  • 1 teaspoon dried thyme
  • 1 teaspoon dried sage
  • 1 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 3/4 cup chicken stock or low-sodium broth
  • 1/2 cup cooked chicken cut into small pieces

Directions

Make the cornbread:

  • Step 1 In a bowl, stir together the cornmeal, flour, 3/4 teaspoon salt, baking powder and baking soda. Whisk the egg and soy or almond milk into the cornmeal mixture. Fill 12 (1/2-cup) greased muffin tins about 2/3 full with the cornbread batter. Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Make the filling:

  • Step 2 In a large cast-iron or heavy skillet, heat the oil over medium high heat until hot, then saute the onion until it softens. Add carrots, mushrooms, celery, salt and pepper to taste, thyme and sage. Cook, stirring occasionally, until golden, 8 to 10 minutes. Stir in green peas. Stir in the flour and cook, until incorporated, about 2 minutes. Pour in the stock and bring to a boil, then stir in the chicken. Season the filling with salt and pepper to taste. Place 2 to 3 tablespoons of the filling over each batter-filled muffin tin.
  • Step 3 Bake the muffins until golden around the edges, about 25 minutes. Let the muffins cool slightly and then run a table knife around the edges of the muffins. They will be easier to remove if you wait a bit, although this may be hard to do!!
  • ENJOY!!

I decided to use a tree of the week from a trip that I took to the New York Botanical Gardens last fall. I thought a bit a greenery would be appropriate! The tree was part of a whimsical and eccentric exhibit, Kusama: Cosmic Nature by the contemporary Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama; more about the exhibit in my next blog!

“Tree of the Week” from NY Botanical Garden- 9/12/21

“I Decided to Get Dressed Up Today!”

STAY WARM AND SAFE!

Bobcat prints! New Marlborough, MA

Coming Soon: “Bird Songs and Mozart’s Starling”!

Wood Thrush perched on a limb singing.

My next blog will be all about intricate bird songs, Mozart’s love of birds and his talented starling, my own talented Cockatiel Lucy and more! In the meantime on this frigid and blustery day, here is a recipe for Blue Corn Waffles.

At the start of the pandemic, we made a mail order for organic blue corn flour. The order was huge and I squirreled away large bags of it in our freezer. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to find a use for all of this flour; not a hard resolution to keep! Yesterday, I made Blue Corn Blueberry Banana Muffins!

Blue Corn Flour Waffles

Yield: 5-6 waffles

Ingredients:

3/4 cup whole grain spelt flour

3/4 whole wheat pastry flour

1/2 cup blue corn flour- *Note

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking powder

4 tablespoons canola oil

1 large egg

1 1/2 cups unsweetened soy or almond milk

For Topping:

1 1/2 cups wild frozen blueberries (I like the Wyman brand)

Cook blueberries in microwave about 2 minutes until soft and syrupy.

To make waffles:

Heat a waffle maker

In a medium sized bowl, mix together dried ingredients.

Add oil, egg and soy or almond milk and mix together.

For each waffle, place about 2 large spoonfuls of mixture in center of waffle maker and cook until light brown and crisp on the edges.

Serve with blueberry sauce, plenty of maple syrup and we enjoy a dollop of Oatley Oatgurt; creamy and totally delicious!

Note: Blue Corn Flour can be hard to find. We found a source on the excellent Milk Street Store site!

ENJOY!!

Norbrook Brewery: Colebrook, CT

STAY SAFE AND WARM!!

A Winter Walk at Ole’ Stoney Lonesome!

Overnight, ice crystals were magically transformed into intricate fractals on our deck.

It was a gloomy day, cold and steely gray; a perfect backdrop to explore an atmospheric section of the Billings Trail called Stoney Lonesome maintained by the Norfolk Connecticut Land Trust.

My husband Paul had scouted out the trail a few days earlier with a friend; they happened upon a lone hiker who stopped in his tracks and asked excitedly, “Did you find the site of the train accident?”

The trail follows an abandoned train track that was built in 1871 and ran from Hartford, Connecticut to the border of New York State. It was built on a high ledge above the Canaan valley, strewn with enormous boulders. There was in fact a horrific wreck that occurred in 1882 when a train rammed into a boulder that had slid down the mountain side onto the track. We read that the laying of the track was very difficult and engineers had to make huge rock cuts into the side of the mountain.

Walking along the trail we were captivated by the dramatic rock formations made from the deep cuts through the mountain side to accommodate the train tracks.

We had set out on our walk late in the afternoon; the days are so short now that by the end of our hike, the sun was starting to set. The clouds suddenly parted and for a brief moment, sunlight lit up the hillside with a golden glow.

Our eyes were drawn uphill to a rock formation that reminded us of stone sculptures that we have viewed at the Storm King Art Center in upstate New York.

By the time we returned to our car, it was almost completely dark. We drove back down the road with a beautiful sunset in front of us leaving somber Stoney Lonesome behind.

Glad to be back safely home after our frosty and invigorating adventure, we settled in next to a cozy fire in the woodstove and enjoyed hot chocolate and a few Gingerbread Biscotti that were left over from Christmas.

After our hike, we wanted to know more about the origin of the name Stoney Lonesome; some sources suggested that the name reflects a desolate area, strewn with rocks and boulders. This certainly seemed appropriate! Then we discovered that the name is also a slang term, made popular in the early 20th century for prison. Paul found the prison reference to Stoney Lonesome in a book written by John O’Hara published in 1931 with the title, “Appointment in Samarra“. The title of the novel refers to W. Somerset Maugham’s retelling of an ancient Mesopotamian fable where a servant has an untimely meeting with the devil- dark indeed!! We were so curious about this that we ordered the book and have gotten pulled into the tragic tale of a used car salesman from the 1930’s.

AND, of course we had a bit of fun arranging Bananagram tiles into references from “Appointment in Samarra“!

Here is a recipe for Gingerbread Biscotti’s adapted from NY Times Cooking. These biscotti are full of warming delicious spices including ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, cardamom, star anise along with espresso powder and almond & orange extract. The spices create a lovely flavor combination that lingers beautifully in the mouth! I swapped out the brown and granulated sugar in the recipe for monk fruit sweetener and coconut sugar which has a low glycemic index. I used whole grain spelt and whole wheat pastry flour, which in addition to being more nutricious, give the biscotti an added nutty flavor and I used Lily’s stevia sweetened chocolate chips. The original recipe called for candied chopped ginger, which would also be good! These biscotti are hard and crunchy and are excellent dipped into coffee or espresso!

Gingerbread Biscotti from NY Times Cooking

Ingredients:

  • 1 large egg plus 1 large egg white, at room temperature 
  • 1/4 cup monk fruit sweetener
  • 1/4 cup coconut sugar
  • 1 tablespoon ground ginger 
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 
  • ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • ½ teaspoon ground cloves 
  • ¼ teaspoon ground cardamom 
  • 1 whole star anise, finely ground (1/4 teaspoon)
  • 1 teaspoon instant espresso powder
  • 1 teaspoon kosher salt
  • ½ teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon almond extract
  • ¼ teaspoon lemon extract or orange extract
  • 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour 
  • 1 cup whole grain spelt flour
  • ⅔ cup/113 grams dark or semisweet chocolate – I used Lily’s Stevia sweetened chocolate chips.
  • 1/2 bar any dark chocolate to coat biscotti- I used Equal Exchange “Total Eclipse” dark chocolate. Feel free to use something with more sugar!)

PREPARATION

  1. Heat the oven to 325 degrees and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
  2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, add the egg, egg white, both sugars, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, cardamom, star anise, espresso powder, salt, baking soda, almond extract and lemon extract. Beat on medium speed just to combine, scrape down the bowl and beater, then increase the speed to high and beat for a full 90 seconds or until the mixture is slightly paler, thick and ribbon like.
  3. Add the flour. Beat on low speed until mostly combined, stopping the beater just before all the flour is incorporated so you don’t overmix. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl to incorporate any remaining dry bits into the dough. Add chocolate chips.
  4. Gather the dough with your hands, kneading lightly in the bowl just to bring everything together into a cohesive mass. Place the dough on the center of the prepared sheet, then dampen your hands with water and mold the dough into a 9-by-4-inch log about 1 inch tall. Bake until the log puffs and spreads a little, turns golden brown at the edges and is firm to the touch, 40 to 45 minutes.
  5. Remove the loaf from the oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes. Transfer the loaf to a cutting board and, using a serrated knife, cut at a diagonal into 12 (¾-inch-wide) slices. Turn the slices on their sides and return to the oven.
  6. Bake, flipping the slices halfway through, until slightly browned and dry in the centers, 10 to 15 minutes. Bake longer for drier, crunchier biscotti. Remove from the oven and cool the biscotti on the sheet. Turn the slices top sides up.
  7. In a double-boiler or a heatproof bowl set over simmering water, melt the chocolate, stirring until completely smooth. Remove the bowl from the heat, and using a small spoon, drape the melted chocolate over the tops of the biscotti, nudging some to drip over the edges. Allow the chocolate to sit at room temperature or in the refrigerator to fully set. The biscotti will last for a couple of weeks in an airtight container at room temperature.

ENJOY!!

As I write this blog, it is a raw cold day with sleet and freezing rain and we are in for a few days of frigid weather. Today I plan to sit close by the fire and enjoy a cookbook that just arrived; My Shanghai: Recipes and Stories for a City on the Water by Betty Liu. I will dream about making dumplings for our next dumpling party which I hope will not be in the too distant future!!

AND, here is the first “Tree of the Week” for 2022!

“YIKES!!”

STAY WARM AND SAFE!!