Weekend update, November 17, 2013

Hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.

Ralph Ellison

I take back any interior amusement I have ever felt about the aged and their fascination with the weather. I take it back, and from henceforth  instead about the way that, as one gets older, one becomes more in tune with  the earth and its temperamental moods.

 This universal apology is offered in part because

I am myself becoming the beloved and venerable
aged one to a younger generation,

 and in part because after 7 days of mercurial threats and forebodings about oncoming winter it is, this afternoon in Texas, 82 degrees. Every single one of them more humid than the degree before. It embarrasses me to admit it, but this is fascinating.

And not just because soup was planned at least once a day, every day last week.

Fascinating also because today, I wonder whether I really ought to be joining that part of the world that's getting some yardwork done when just 72 hour ago, I was wondering whether I really ought to be joining that part of the world that's in hibernation. 

You yourself would be bored straight into a 16 week long nap were I to tell you all the interesting things I learned this week about true hibernation.  There are, as it turns out, humans that hibernate. But we don't call them hibernating humans. We call them recluses, or hermits, and we describe them as either

weird and wonderful,

or weird and scary,

or if they're hermit crabs, they're weird and kinda cute.

Of course, although we, and other animals with a steady food supply, don't actually do the hibernation thing, although we face no winter scarcity of resources, when the weather chills most of us still crave the warm, calorie-rich, fat-laden sort of food that will see us safely through a winter. Health conscious as we have become, our traditions still dictate that for winter's biggest big guy, we leave an offering of buttery delicious carbs:

I can find exactly zero pictures of
Santa eating a salad.

 I think that's wonderful.
Not just because I love cookies.
But because there's a whole lot of stuff that needs doing over the next few months, and keeping pace with all those frantic activities requires spurts of frenzied inactivity and plenty of good food.  Besides- the soups and stews and roasted everythings of winter are warming wonders, and there are plenty of ways to make them the food of a healthy not-quite-hibernation.
Case in point:
The red sauce that formed the basis for three of this weeks meals.
(Ok, so the recipe contains butter. It also contains a barrel and a half of licopene-rich tomatoes.)
Doing the all day simmer in a slow cooker, however, did not provide the hoped for results:

I think I do not know how to use a crockpot.

Five hours in the slow cooker and no visible thickening or reduction. The onions weren't even cooked. A salamander could've have crawled up an oozing bank, spent a generation or a thousand evolving hair (or not, as you prefer), and over the course of eons grown into a bear that curled up for a three month hibernation and this sauce STILL would not have been ready for dinner. So, it was tipped into a pot and refrigerated and the next day subjected to the regular stovetop simmer-down.

Three hours on the stove top. done.
I really do not know how to use a crockpot.

a quick spin with twenty of the smartest dollars ever spent in this kitchen, aka our immersion blender:

Things are getting pretty saucy now, aren't they.

And there's three zip bags of sauce. One in the freezer, one for minestrone, and one for tomato basil soup.

Since we happened to have 2% milk, evaporated milk and half and half in the fridge all at one time, I indulged in a little experiment with that tomato basil:

Half and half. 

evaporated milk

two percent.

See all those little grainy bits in the two percent sample? That happens when the acid in the tomatoes hits the dairy stuff and causes it to curdle. The lower the dairy's fat content, the more curdles. That's why so many tomato-basil soups include heavy cream. If you want to cut out those creamy calories, the evaporated milk did the best job of holding its stuff together.

 I hope that this week and this winter,

 your stuff holds together too-because

A thing and it's opposite sometimes lie close together;

as winter approaches, they snuggle up tight.

solitude and society

rest and action

leaving and landing

darkness and light.

This is the time of love and paradox.

So it's a big wish, and yet I hope for you

that this week, and maybe all winter long

all the season's opposing forces

will be held for you

in  beautiful and fearless balance.