The Reindeer Keeper

  I've been thinking about the day I took this photo a few years ago. It was mid-January and although it doesn't look it, the temperature was below zero. It was a day like the recent days we've been experiencing. Beautiful and sunny, then absolutely earth shattering frigid cold when the sun goes down. Even the moon, as glorious and bright as it has been, is unable to warm the night. I remember standing there in the snow, dressed in layers and shivering as I took some photos and as I took the photos, I listened to the Amish men, laughing and talking as they cut through the ice, then loaded those blocks onto wagons to take back home and store in their barns or sheds. A dog they had with them barked as the cattails snapped to my touch and geese said good morning. The horses stood in place, a few curious of my presence. I remember hearing and reading stories my Aunt Helen wrote in a family cookbook of my grandfather, bundled up in his fur coat and cap and his horses covered in ...

With the last few days being below zero I went to my survival kit for help. There are no hand warmers or candles or blankets or hot tea in that kit. There's actually no kit. But there are memories of my grandmother's Johnny Cake recipe and my mother's recipe for a soup that came to be known as her Witch's Brew. Both recipes warm a below zero string of days and nights. So yesterday I got busy. A main ingredient in the Witch's Brew is acini d'pepe. Those tiny little balls of macaroni are what my kids most remember and most enjoyed. That's probably because, to them, those little balls resembled little eyeballs in the Witch's Brew. They were eating eyeballs! Lucky for me I had a few boxes of the eyeballs in the cupboard so out they came along with whatever else I needed. With the soup in the works, I brought out the cornmeal for the Johnny Cake which I turned into little muffins. As the wind howled and the furnace went nonstop and the music played and the Wi...

Back in 1975 the oldest of my grandmother's six daughters undertook a project that still brings smiles to those of us who have followed. This aunt was quite creative. I remember her making Christmas candles using discarded milk cartons and serving the best sloppy joes ever. But it was that project years ago of sitting down with my grandmother and collecting her most treasured recipes and then putting them in order in a handwritten cookbook that takes the cak e-pardon the pun. You have to understand. Many of my grandmother's recipes weren't written down or found in another cookbook. They certainly weren't on line. The only on line back then was a clothesline.Her recipes were in her heart-her mind. Many didn't have exact measurements. A pinch of this-a thing or two of that were used to define teaspoons and tablespoons. How long to bake something was often not told in time but how something looked or smelled in the oven. "Until it looks cooked" was a favort...

Harvesting Ice in the Wintertime: Years back one of my aunts-the oldest of six sisters-blessed all of us with a hand-written recipe book featuring my grandmother's recipes-many enjoyed for generations. But that recipe book titled, "Mom' s Farm Kitchen", is so much more as my talented aunt divided the book into the four seasons. At the beginning of each section she wrote her memories of growing up on the farm in relationship to that particular season. It's a true treasure-telling not only family stories but of life in general-a documentary of a simpler time. Today I found myself thinking of one particular Winter entry my aunt wrote as I happened upon Amish harvesting ice not far from where I live. After taking a picture of them hard at work in sub-zero weather, I came home-pulled out the cookbook and read what she'd written about the times my grandfather "hired out with his team of horses and a flat-bedded sleigh to draw ice from the St. Lawrence to...