Fast Flowers and Finished Projects

Each day brings more blooms. The cold front that moved in late Monday, dropping temperatures to below average for mid-April, hasn’t put a damper on the fast unfurling of colorful petals. Since my interest in botany developed out of my enthusiasm for edible plants, I am not good at identifying flowers. Often I know their names but am hard pressed to match a word to an actual plant in front of me. There’s lots to learn. One new match I made this week is between the word wisteria and this fragrant bush in the gardens of Schloss Schönbrunn.

The scent is too heavy and floral for my taste, but I can understand why some people might like to train it to climb a frame in their garden. Thanks to the MG having them in the yard, I am capable of identifying peonies. It will be some time before hers look like these.

The German word for peony is Pfingstrose, or Pentecost rose, which hints at when it used to bloom. (I specifically write “used to” instead of “normally” because we have left that predictable climate behind us.) Since Pentecost Sunday falls on May 19, this is yet another example of how flowering plants are a month ahead of schedule this year. While they have been growing more quickly, I have been working more slowly on certain knitting projects. Started in November, this dark green sweater is finally done. Even though it’s cool enough to wear it, I folded it up and put it in the drawer until fall.

The next finished object did not take nearly as long to make: the bamboo tank that I started in February. It was the first garment I have made in bamboo. My suspicion was that it would stretch and took this into account when deciding how long to knit the body and straps. Blocking indeed made it grow, as will wearing it. It feels very heavy, but that is probably because I knit a larger size than I normally knit since this is for someone else. Now the slate is clear for working with the plant fibers that have been waiting patiently for my attention: Portuguese linen, ramie, and a cotton, linen, and nettle blend.

Just as I completed two knitting projects, I finally tried out a recipe I had been wanting to make since February: bakkemoezevlaai, or baked mice pie, from Regula Ysewijn’s cookbook Dark Rye and Honey Cake. The baked mice in question are plant-based: that’s how people in the Low Countries refer to dried pears (German Kletzen). The yeasted crust was simple. The difficult part was pressing the cooked dried pears through a sieve. The creamy consistency of the filling was worth the work. KA found it tasted dezent, good with a light flavor. I was slightly disappointed, unable to taste the cinnamon and wishing I had another slice of the prune pie from Ash Wednesday. It’s easy to get dried pears in Austrian supermarkets because they are a key ingredient in Kletzenbrot, a traditional fruitcake eaten during Advent. The recipe gives instructions about how to prepare dried pears from fallen fruit unsuitable for eating raw. I’m glad I didn’t need to dry my own pears, but it’s good to know what to do with these types of pears so nothing goes to waste. Now it’s time to leave dried winter fruit behind us and gear up for rhubarb and strawberry season.

Wishing you colorful flowers in bloom and an end to winter projects!

April Flowers Bring Portuguese Linen

It used to be April showers bring May flowers. Now the flowers are already in full bloom in April. On my way back from meeting a friend for coffee and pastries at a French boulangerie on the other side of Vienna, dark purple irises caught my eye through the window of the S-Bahn. Forsythia bushes are no longer yellow since their petals have vanished, and most magnolias have lost theirs as well. Lilac bushes are in full bloom. Yesterday I was stunned to see the yellow of Goldregen (common laburnum) outside the window. I blogged about that last year in mid-May. The vegetation is a month ahead of its normal schedule. As the climate changes, perhaps we should adopt the German expression Der April macht, was er will. April does what it likes.

Over Easter, we were treated to a heat wave that brought massive amounts of sand from the Sahara. As we crossed the Danube on Easter Monday on our way to visit KA’s sister in Lower Austria, the sky was gray and visibility was poor. It looked like smog had enveloped Vienna, whose skyscrapers disappeared into the gloom. Apokalyptisch, KA commented. Austria’s weather service GeoSphere Austria defines a summer day as one that is 25° C (77° F). We had our first official summer day over the long Easter weekend, when I had to fish my linen clothing out of the drawer. Good thing I finished up two wool projects because it is no longer pleasant to have a lap full of wool. First, I would like to introduce the honeycomb stitch scarf I started at the beginning of Lent. It is folded in half twice in the picture and looking for a new home.

The second project is a wrap made of Mondim, a Portuguese wool. I followed the Smokeshow pattern but left out the two-row bobble because I was concerned about having enough yarn. I also wasn’t up to the hassle of knitting and purling three stitches together hundreds of times. It looks fine without it, though the shorter top edge of the trapezoid-shaped shawl wants to roll. Blocking helped some but not completely. I bought the wool at the Vienna Wool Festival in 2019 when I fell in love with the color. It  reminds me of azulejos, the blue and white tiles you see everywhere in Portugal. When I traveled to Lisbon ten years ago, I discovered not only azulejos but also Retrosaria and Rosa Pomar’s exquisite wool yarns from Portuguese sheep. At the festival in Vienna, I was delighted to discover a yarn store in Vienna that carries these yarns. For a long time, I didn’t know what to make with the Mondim. I wear lots of blue, yet this shade doesn’t match any of my clothing. I finally decided to make a wrap for winter to wear at home. Winter is a good time for colors that spark joy and lift your spirits, right? While browsing new patterns on Ravelry in March, I found Smokeshow, which is inspired by two Espace Tricot patterns I have wanted to knit. It called for two skeins of fingering weight held double with a laceweight yarn, and I had just the right amount of a silk and alpaca blend in an off white shade that complemented the Mondim. After ten days of knitting, my wrap was finished by Easter…and it was much too hot to wear. Now it is folded up and waiting for fall in the space in the drawer recently vacated by my summer linen clothing.

One of the perks of having an iPhone is that I can pore over weather data: for example, how much the day’s temperature deviates from the average high for that date. For the past week or two, the temperatures in Vienna have been +12° C or +13° C above the average. What if the winds continue to blow our way from the Sahara and the temperatures in July and August are also 12° C warmer than usual? I had better prepare by making linen garments. The boulangerie where I met my friend this morning is conveniently located near the yarn store that carries Retrosaria yarn. It also carries yarn from Rosários 4, another Portuguese company that produces a 100% linen yarn called Alfama, which is named after an atmospheric neighborhood in Lisbon suffering from gentrification. Alfama is also the title of a Madredeus song in Wim Wenders’ film Lisbon Story. The azulejo tiles in the film clip in the link bring back memories of travels past. Some Alfama linen returned home with me from my much shorter journey across the city and back. What will it become?

Wishing you beautiful flowers and weather-appropriate clothing!

Eastertide Eats

Easter. It has never been my favorite holiday, probably because I have always associated it with ham. That’s what was on the menu every Easter when I was growing up. Ham is one of the reasons I became a vegetarian. As a child, I found its quivering pink particularly revolting. To this day, I feel a visceral rejection of meat. It’s hard to explain. It just seems like something I shouldn’t be eating. I stopped doing so as soon as I was old enough to start cooking for myself. While I feel queasy about chickens and factory farming, I do continue to eat eggs. All eggs produced in Austria are cage-free, and chicken feed must not contain GMOs. As this is the egg holiday par excellence, I made a rice and spinach tart, which is basically a crustless quiche.

In Austria, spinach is traditionally eaten on Maundy Thursday, which is called Green Thursday in German (Gründonnerstag). Why is a matter of theorizing. My interpretation: spinach is an early vegetable and ready to go at this time of the year, so it makes sense to eat fresh food that’s on hand. That said, I had been eyeballing a bag of frozen spinach in the freezer compartment for some time, so my tart contains frozen. I baked it yesterday in a fit of wanting to use up what’s in the fridge. After boiling risotto rice until a few minutes shy of al dente, I sautéed onions, spring onions, and garlic in olive oil until soft. Then I added the frozen spinach and cooked it until it was done. In a large bowl, I mixed the rice with the spinach mixture plus three eggs, the grated rest of a wedge of pecorino, some crumbled feta, an entire bunch of diced chives, and the rest of a small jar of Taggiasca olives. After pouring it into a tart form, I baked it until the top was starting to turn golden. What’s nice is that it can be eaten hot out of the oven as well as at room temperature. One slice with another cooked vegetable on the side or a green salad makes for a satisfying meal.

Another egg dish I enjoy making is peperonata topped with two fried eggs and a side of green salad (arugula above); feta is optional. Peperonata is a sauce of cooked red peppers – though a yellow or orange one thrown into the mix is fine too. Last week the supermarket had gorgeous Austrian grown peppers – presumably from a greenhouse, but they were so beautiful to look at and crisp in a way only freshly picked produce is. The sauce turned out meltingly creamy – just as it should be.

Eggs also feature in gado gado, an Indonesian dish best described as a salad composed of raw vegetables, eggs, tofu or tempeh, and peanut sauce. I followed the recipe in Mollie Katzen’s The Moosewood Cookbook, which gives plenty of options for how to put it together. I substituted lettuce for fresh spinach as the base layer. On top of that (hard to see in the picture) is turmeric tinted basmati rice. The next layer consists of raw sliced Savoy cabbage and carrots. Then come cubes of fried tofu and finally peanut sauce made of peanut butter, onion, soy sauce, and apple cider vinegar. Tofu is so filling that I saw no need to hard boil eggs and add them on top. 

What would a holiday be without a special bake? On Good Friday, I made Cornish saffron buns, which were originally eaten on that day before becoming common throughout the year. Watching saffron change the dough a bright yellow color is magical – no eggs required. It felt good to knead dough again. Where are the buns to go with my coffee, KA asked today. All gone. Transformed into fuel for long walks during which there is always something new to notice. More and more trees are following the crowd and growing leaves, blossoms, and other organic adornments. Tulips are catching up to daffodils. Magnolias are already losing their petals. Perhaps it’s time for another walk to see what else is happening.

Wishing you culinary inspiration, with or without eggs!

Beyond the Gate

What lies beyond the gate? What will the next three months bring? About the only thing that can be said with any certainty: change against a backdrop of abundant foliage and blossoms.

Yellow blooms give way to white and pink blossoms. Trees are beacons that beckon: admire me, I’m putting on my annual show and giving it my all. Even the aging magnolia in the courtyard keeps on performing.

Wild garlic (Allium ursinum) is spreading rapidly in the damp spots it favors. When I look around me in parks and woodland, there is more green than brown. In a week or two, we should have reached that point where suddenly everything seems to be green and vibrating with new life and possibility. There must be a word for that moment in spring when the plants have all revived after winter, unfurling their leaves, a word gone missing since humans traded a life spent outdoors for one electrified and closed off from fresh air, sunshine, and constant interaction with plants and animals. I imagine that all languages from latitudes where there are four seasons must have had a word for this. English probably did too. Perhaps one remains in a dialect here or there. We humans ignore our connection to plants at our own peril. No plants, no food, no life.

Plants are inspiring a circular shawl I started on the spring equinox. Following Elizabeth Zimmermann’s pi shawl pattern (explained here), I cast on with a laceweight wool and cotton yarn. Cooler greens with a hint of blue have been calling me lately; marsh is the name of the colorway, What the uninitiated may not realize is that knitting is all about math. A pi shawl is one that is knitted from the center out. It increases at intervals related to the number pi (approximately 3.14). For a shawl whose diameter is roughly 72 inches/183 cm, only six increase rows are necessary. I have already done four in the shawl pictured below. This allows easy experimentation with different patterns. My plan is to knit a little every day and finish it by the summer solstice. I have found a few leaf and plant motifs that I like and will add them in as I go along. I have no fixed vision of what this shawl will look like. Like life, it will be a surprise and I’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

What’s important to me is the daily practice of knitting, of not knowing how it will turn out, of thinking about plants and how we value them so much that we attempt to represent them in textiles. The color matches this time of year. The shape is the circle of seasons that we cycle through as long as we live. Let’s circle back to the start of this post: What lies beyond the gate? What will the next three months bring? Plants and more green – and creative adaptation to whatever happens along the way.

May you find inspiration in the plants growing around you!

Tracking the Green

Spring is spreading across the land. Brown remains the predominant color, yet each day more green comes into play. On days when the wind is at bay and the sun shines, I become buoyant. The past two days have been cloudy, rainy days; deflating and depleting. Today I hope to return to my daily round of walking to inspect what has grown in the meantime. Yellow blooms are everywhere, even alongside city streets. Primroses (Primula vulgaris) lead the pack, forsythias follow, and daffodils do not dally.

The dawn chorus of birds is starting to intensify. A chiffchaff (Phylloscopus collybita, German Zilpzalp) joined in this morning for the first time. These birds nest close to the ground in brambles or nettles. One of the nice things about living on a street of apartment buildings is that there are few roaming cats, which makes it a safer place for birds. Cats can decimate bird populations. According to the book I just finished reading (Caroline Ring’s Wanderer zwischen den Welten), cats are the probable cause for the sharp decline in the number of crested larks (Galerida cristata, German Haubenlerche) in German cities over the past 30 years. Unlike many endangered species who have had their habitat eradicated by humans, crested larks could thrive in cities – but not if cats plunder their nests. According to the book, there are 17 million cats in Germany, most of which spend time outdoors, and 2 million stray cats. The result: At least 130 million birds are killed by cats every year. This is not just a German problem; in the U.S., cats are the most frequent cause of death for birds. Starting in 2002, the town of Walldorf in Germany’s state of Baden-Württemberg decided to protect its crested lark population by instituting a lockdown for house cats from April through August so the larks can reproduce and rear their young in peace. The fine for non-compliance? EUR 500. And if your cat kills a crested lark, it will cost you EUR 50,000. Instead of cats, the main mammals I see outside are squirrels, nervous and nut-loving.

On the subject of nuts – and thus food, let’s turn to the latest vegetable soup I have discovered, revithia or revithosoupa. The recipe I tried is from Georgina Hayden’s cookbook Nistisima, which features traditional (vegan) cuisine eaten in Greece, Cyprus, and neighboring countries on the Orthodox church’s numerous fast days. On the island of Sifnos, this soup is typical Sunday fare and prepared in clay pots. The star: chickpeas, supported by onions and other veggies (carrot, celery, garlic) plus olive oil. Hayden’s recipe also includes tahini. Perhaps my soup wasn’t authentic because I didn’t have any lemons on hand, but it was tasty. KA normally eschews my bean soups, but he liked this one. While it looks like hummus, its consistency is lighter and loftier. Next time I will halve the amount of celery to lessen its strong flavor and diuretic effect or even omit it.

After a light soup for dinner, there’s knitting. The blue jeans cowl is done. It may look long enough for a swan or goose, but it scrunches together and easily collapses into a soft, warming, and protective hug for a human neck. Will I wear it myself or give it away to an admiring acquaintance?

While the honeycomb stitch scarf continues to grow at a measured pace, a garment is quickly taking shape: a simple stockinette tank top. I am knitting it for a cousin who is partial to bamboo. The yarn is slippery and cool to work with. The back is done, and the front would be finished soon if it weren’t for the yarn festival I went to on Saturday. The association Wollträume Wien held a yarn fair in Vienna this past weekend. A friend and I went and scoped out the yarn. As expected, much was hand-dyed merino, brightly colored, soft, variegated, flashy. Not my thing, but that’s what is popular. Of course I managed to find something to my taste, coming home with a laceweight wool and cotton blend in three different colors. It wasn’t long before I had to cast on and try out said yarn. But more on that next time. The sunshine beckons and my legs refuse to stay bent and cooped up under this table any longer.

May you enjoy the seasonal shift in outdoor colors!

No Lions in Sight

Following a frost-free February, March means more movement. The weather is conducive to strolling. Never before in 257 years of collecting weather data has Austria’s official weather agency registered an average monthly temperature that was so far above the long-term average. Today, for example, it is 10° C above the average temperature. The rooks left for higher latitudes around the same time they normally do. It’s the plants that are starting earlier than usual – and some dramatically. The apricot trees west of Vienna in the Wachau, for example, have already started to blossom – four weeks too early. The big question: Will there be a cold spell that affects the fruit trees and cancels the harvest? 

The year in Katherine Swift’s The Morville Year starts in March. This practice dates back to at least the ancient Romans. The saying that introduces the first section on March is “March comes in with an adder’s head and goes out with a peacock’s tail.” Apparently this is what is said in Scotland (Readers there, can you confirm? And even explain where the saying comes from?). In the U.S., we say “March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.” KA and I have seen neither lion nor adder on our walks this week, just plenty of birds, buds and blooms. Swift’s book is a collection of articles on gardening that appeared in The Times. I plan on reading them over the course of this new Roman year. There are eight to nine each month, so there will be something to read every few days. The blue jeans cowl knit with gifted laceweight yarn of unidentified fiber content will be long finished by the time I get to the end of Swift’s book.

While I don’t think I’ll need to pull out my summer clothes by the end of this month, I do have an organic cotton summer bag ready for when I do. There are different patterns out there for knitting or sewing this simple bag, though you don’t need one. You knit a rectangle – garter or stockinette, your choice – whose length is three times its width, then fold it into shape, sew the two seams, and add a handle. I picked up stitches and knit a ribbed handle, which when stretched looks like stockinette. It’s just the right size for a phone, wallet, and book. Though the cover Wanderer zwischen den Welten by Caroline Ring matches the bag, I won’t need to carry it around since at the rate of one chapter a day, I should finish it later this week. The author, who is an evolutionary biologist by trade, takes the reader on a tour of Germany’s cities and their feathered inhabitants. Each chapter features a bird and a city. The last chapter I read was about Hamburg, which has a relationship with swans similar to London’s with ravens. My guess is that the free and Hanseatic city is the only place in the world with a public servant in charge of swans: there has been an official Schwanenvater (swan father) since the 17th century. Legend says that when there are no more swans swimming on its canals, lakes, and rivers, Hamburg will have ceased to be a free city. Let’s hope these strong and elegant white birds continue to thrive there and elsewhere.

Two books read slowly are plenty, especially since I have four active knitting projects. The next is a Lenten honeycomb stitch scarf whose pattern was printed out years ago and waited patiently for me to pull it out of my pattern file. Every day, I do two repeats of the four row honeycomb stitch pattern, and if my calculations are correct, I should finish by Easter. (Note this is honeycomb mesh and not the honeycomb cable stitch, which is typically found in Aran patterns.) Knit on larger needles than the yarn calls for, the scarf is stretchy and will grow much longer once I block it. The yarn is Alpakka Silke from Sandes Garn, two skeins I picked up on clearance at a yarn store that was moving. I like the idea of marking time through knitting and am already envisioning a spring shawl to start on the vernal equinox and finish by the summer solstice. By the first day of spring, I should have finished the fourth project, a cardigan recently awakened from hibernation. The first sleeve fits just fine. Next, I will finish the body and button band and ensure the sleeve length is correct. Then I will finish off by knitting the second sleeve. Spring is that surge in energy that allows you to tackle something you had no capacity for just a few weeks ago. That’s the only way I can explain why this project has suddenly come back to life.

Wishing you a spring surge in energy!

Alles Krapfen…Fast

Fasching has come and gone. I believe I ate more Krapfen in the last three weeks than in the past five years. My hypothesis: an excessive workload has left my depleted brain gasping for fuel. The perfect solution: a round package of sugar and fat called a jelly-filled doughnut. Until last Friday, I had made do with apricot jam-filled Krapfen from the Hofer supermarket chain, which were actually very good. Baking Krapfen is a big business in Vienna. Every year, Gault Millau ranks the best Krapfen in town. Readers may remember that last year it was Der Mann. This year, Groissböck was voted number one, so KA and I headed to a Groissbäck cafe to see if we agreed.

Cafe Groissböck offered two types of Krapfen, one with an apricot filling (the gold standard for Austrian Krapfen and the type that is ranked) and one with a vanilla cream filling. KA went for traditional apricot while I opted for vanilla. We both found the dough light and airy, much more so than the Hofer doughnuts. I would have preferred more cake around the filling. Instead, there was hardly anything to chew but pockets of air. What disappointed me even more was the sickly artificial vanilla flavor and the overuse of sugar. A cream filling should have a mouthfeel of fat and not be cloyingly sweet. I was stunned at how mediocre the doughnut was. Having chosen a jam filling, KA found his was OK but preferred the Hofer doughnut for similar reasons (“mehr zum Beißen“). On our way home, we passed Der Mann, which had dropped to third place. Last year their Powidlkrapfen were good enough that I still thought of them from time to time, so I decided to get one to eat at home. Filled with Powidl, or plum jam, and topped with finely ground poppy seeds (on the far right in the picture above), this Krapfen did not disappoint. Der Mann should have won again, and I don’t say that simply because I love plums. This love leads me to my next seasonal baking project: pruimenvlaai.

There is a new cookbook in my life, Dark Rye and Honey Cake by Regula Ysewijn. It explores the baking traditions of Belgium, the Netherlands, and French Flanders (the Flemish part of northern France). I had to wait until Ash Wednesday to try out the intriguing recipe for prune pie, or pruimenvlaai. This pie is eaten in Antwerp as Carnival ends and Lent starts. Prunes are soaked in water overnight, cooked with cinnamon until soft, puréed to a paste, then spread into a shortcrust pastry shell. There should be a lattice on top, but the dough had a minor disagreement with the rolling pin, so my pie is not quite traditional. I suspect it was because I had added a little rye flour to the spelt flour substituted for the wheat flour called for in the recipe. Nevertheless, the pie was good. Remarkably creamy and naturally sweet, the prune filling is guaranteed to please lovers of Powidl and plums.

Prune pie is the third recipe I’ve tried from the cookbook. The first was for a rye and raisin bread, which has become a favorite. The second was the recipe for crêpes called Doubles de Binches. Binches is a town in Wallonia, the French part of Belgium, known for its Carnival traditions that include a parade where the Gilles, men dressed in towering hats of ostrich feathers, throw oranges at the crowd. This savory crêpe recipe does not call for oranges, just a mixture of whole wheat and buckwheat flours and the usual suspects. Since Flemish boulette cheese is not available in Vienna, I spread goat cheese on mine. All this good food has kept my arms, hands, and fingers moving industriously throughout the Carnival period. I am happy to unveil my latest knitted creation: a fingering weight shawl with a border of intricate Celtic knotwork. It sits wonderfully on my shoulders and will keep me warm until spring arrives.

May you discover a seasonal food from another cultural tradition!

An Uplifting Afternoon

What better way to bid January adieu than to meet a dear old friend for Kaffee and Kuchen in a café devoted to antique elevators? If you like, you can sip your brew while sitting in one of two old Viennese lifts in the main room. While perfect for a romantic rendez-vous, an elevator seat is not the best choice if you want to stretch your legs. Thankfully there are also three tables with ample legroom. In Katherine Swift’s magnificent The Morville Hours, she writes of how the double-headed Roman god Janus was depicted in a 15th century Book of Hours as feasting in January, one head eating chicken, the other drinking from a goblet. Lacking a second head, I did my best to gracefully mimic the god of beginnings and doorways, alternating between sipping coffee and nibbling on a slice of marble Gugelhupf, that quintessential Viennese yeasted cake. 

Ring-shaped Gugelhupf has been eaten here for at least two thousand years. Bronze cake pans have been found that date back to the days of Carnuntum and Noricum – when Vienna was just a Roman military base called Vindobona. There were surely crows back then as there are today, but which ones – hooded or carrion? Were the rooks already spending the winter here and flying off to what is now Russia in the spring? Sadly not one of the pressing questions of archeology, but I would be interested in the answer just the same.

Since the infamous Vienna wind had taken the day off, our café visit was followed by a stroll through the nearby Belvedere Palace Gardens and Botanical Garden. The spire of Stephansdom gleamed white in the distance, the haze mostly blotting out Kahlenberg, Vienna’s own mountain. Odd was what looked like a plume of smoke from behind the spire. Had the terrorists who have been plotting to blow up the cathedral finally succeeded in setting it ablaze? No. More plausibly, its source may have been the city’s photogenic incinerator in Spittelau, which lines up with the cathedral and the Belvedere gardens.

The afternoon was a nice break from work and the computer screen on the one hand and windy, walk-discouraging weather on the other. My spirits were lifted up by historic elevators, good company, and conversation. Perhaps it was no coincidence that my friend and I met at a café where the following sign graces the counter. Portier is the German word for porter or doorman. The waiter even wore an old-fashioned hotel porter’s uniform. Our doorway champion Janus would surely approve. Now the door of January is firmly shut behind us and it’s forward into February.

Wishing you an uplifting afternoon!

January Flavors

When I returned from my winter migration, having finally escaped O’Hare airport during the first snowstorm of 2024, two gold-rimmed espresso cups and saucers were waiting for me in my dear and narrow galley kitchen in Vienna. Salvaged by KA from a bag of abandoned dishes, they are the perfect size for my morning espresso, and they match my knitting journal and desk to boot. I like the subtle bumpy texture of the otherwise plain Gönül Collection pieces, and the little upwards pointing thingie on the handle has started to grow on me. Who did they belong to? I conjure up a story: An older Turkish woman has died; her grandchildren who have grown up in Vienna and prefer to shop at IKEA don’t want old Turkish porcelain to remind them of the old country. Regardless of their history, the cups have found a good home.

I returned just in time to bake KA a birthday cake. Over the holidays, I discovered the cookbooks of Skye McAlpine, a British woman who grew up and still lives in Venice. While the recipes are heavy on meat and dairy as is much northern Italian as well as British cuisine, I enjoy her approach to food, namely that cooking for people is a way of showing love. Her latest cookbook from 2023 is entitled A Table Full of Love, and KA was treated to her orange loaf cake. Orange juice and zest meet almond flour in an aromatic and lightly textured dairy-free cake. KA found it sehr gut, and what more can you ask of a birthday cake than that it satisfy the Geburtstagskind? If I had to choose a flavor motif for the past few months, it would be oranges and almonds. Of all the cookies and cakes I baked over the holidays, those that included one or both of these two ingredients were hands down my favorites: almond crinkle cookies, Swedish almond wreath (Mandelkrans), and said orange loaf cake, which I baked for the first time on New Year’s Eve. Furthermore, the black platter on which the birthday cake was served is now overflowing with Sicilian blood oranges and Greek navel oranges.

The birthday cake was the final chapter in holiday baking. Savory soup season is here, the perfect way to recover from the sweet excesses of Christmas. How about pasta e ceci (pasta and chickpea soup) in just thirty minutes? Sauté a little garlic in olive oil and toss in a few sprigs of chopped fresh rosemary. Open a small can of tomatoes – diced or whole, your call – and add the entire contents to the pot. Simmer them for around ten minutes, smashing the whole tomatoes into smaller pieces, then add a small can of (drained) chickpeas and a liter of water. Bring to a boil and simmer for ten minutes. If you like, blend some of the soup with an immersion blender, then add some small pasta shapes and cook until they are al dente. Salt and pepper to taste. Decorate with a drizzle of olive oil (vegan) and/or grated cheese (vegetarian). Enjoy watching the birds outside as you sit in a warm room nourished by a bowl of homemade soup.

May you find time to cook satisfying food for you and your loved ones!

Peak Cookie

The actual winter solstice was a letdown – a completely cloudy slate blue sky obscured the sun entirely – but the days leading up to it bestowed some impressive sunrises over Lake Michigan on the lucky observer. Timing is everything as the sky shapeshifts quicker than you think. And here is Christmas already, and with it peak cookie. Despite the mad work schedule of the past month, I managed to bake seven different types of cookies and the MG made one as well. On top of that, we received a boxful of cookies that include family favorites, so I won’t need any more sugar in the first half of 2024.

Since my celebration of Christmas culminates on Christmas Eve, the preparation and work are now over. Following the COVID pandemic, the heartbreak of late-stage dementia, and last year’s decision to remain in Vienna over the holidays, this was the first Christmas I celebrated with family in four years. We remembered those no longer with us and enjoyed a homemade meal and good cheer. The MG and I served up a feast for seven. Following a buffet of diverse appetizers, there was pork tenderloin with fig glaze for the omnivores and then polenta, spinach-ricotta pie, and arugula-walnut salad for everyone. I couldn’t bring myself to buy the rollable pie crust the recipe called for since the supermarket only had crusts with palm oil (which is destroying the rainforest) or lard (which is not vegetarian). So I made my own pie crust using a rustic galette recipe. The balls on top are the result of my attempt to make it look like a medieval pie and not waste any extra dough.

Fortified by leftovers, I finally have time to sink into a good book or two or three or more. It’s the perfect time of year to lose track of time and travel far from the couch in the company of a good writer. If you are looking for engrossing nonfiction published in 2023, my favorites of the year have been John Vaillant’s Fire Weather, Katherine May’s Enchantment, Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger, Cat Bohannon’s Eve, and Philipp Blom’s Aufklärung in Zeiten der Verdunkelung. Bookworm readers are welcome to leave a comment with their favorite book of 2023. When the leftovers run out, there are also a few cookbooks on my stack with recipes to try out.

There may also be some new knitting going on during the twelve days of Christmas. A laceweight shawl started in spring is finally finished and blocked. An incredibly simple charcoal cowl has become my favorite item this winter – simply cast on 100 stitches with a fingering weight yarn on a yarn-appropriate needle size and knit in the round until it is 13 inches or as long as you would like it to be. I used the 30 grams of Le Petit Lambswool that remained after I knit a charcoal beret.

As the sun sets on Christmas Day, it’s time to hibernate from the screen for awhile, to stare at the sky and see and hear what is in front of me. Thank you, dear reader, for traveling to the forum, which will reopen in the new year.

Wishing you a peaceful and restorative end to 2023 and a healthy and serene 2024!