The unheard of is happening: it’s raining! We’re supposed to take the kids to the fair tonight but I’d rather not go. I’d prefer to stay at home and luxuriate in the foreign sound of pounding rain on metal roof.

Plus, it’s chilly outside—perfect for baking nectarine tarts and making spaghetti sauce.

Plus, I made a library run this morning and I adore the sounds of the kids slishing pages, books thudding to the ground after they finish them.

So tell me, why would I want to go out on a night like tonight? To some godforsaken field the whole way across town where the lights glare and the music blares and my kids are bound to get a frightful case of the gimmies? I am not a proponent of fairs.

I am a fair proponent, however, so because we said we’ll go, we’ll go. I will stop my whining right now.

The other night for supper, I threw together a hodgepodge of a meal which ended up delighting me down to the tips of my paint-flecked toenails. I got the idea from a fun blog called Stonesoup, the focus of which is minimalism. (Which is not a word, I know. Humor me, okay?)

I am not, let me state for the record, a minimalist. I routinely make my life as complicated as possible and then take perverse pleasure in trying to wiggle my way out from under. Just ask my husband.

And, again, for the record, I get irritated with modern thinking, the kind that tries to lump everything you’ve ever known into three categories, or perhaps five. You know what I mean: The top three things to look for in a man. Or, Three kitchen gadgets you simply can not do without. Or, Cleaning your house in five easy steps. We are a people flooded with too much stuff, too many desires, and too little wisdom. Compartmentalizing life helps us to feel like we’re in control.

To which I say hogwash. There is no such thing as being in control of life.

Though the illusion is quite charming.

Oh my goodness. Now where in the world did that speech come from? I must be feeling peevish.

But, since I brought it up…

The top three things to look for in a man:
1. work-worn hands
2. twinkly eyes
3. straight teeth
Bonus points for a tool belt.

The top three kitchen gadgets you simply can not do without:
1. a sharp knife
2. a grater
3. band-aids, because knives and graters are dangerous things
Bonus points: food to chop and grate.

How to clean your house in five easy steps:
1. Eliminate the word “easy”
2. Put everything back in its place
3. Dust
4. Vacuum
5. Wash windows
Bonus points for not crying.

And to think I started out this post telling you about my supper. Sheesh. I’m not sure I even remember what it was anymore. I’m starting to feel guilty for sitting here when I have dirty windows and all my bookshelves are, quite simply, chaos shelved.

Supper was (quick! before I run down another bunny trail!) beans, barley, and sausage simmered in tomatoes and red wine.

The top three components of a good dinner:
1. scrumptious
2. easy
3. filling
Bonus points: it gives you the illusion you are in control.
Extra bonus points: the kids like it.

Barley and Beans with Sausage and Red Wine
Wildly adapted from Stonesoup

I used barley because it’s what I had on hand, but pasta would work fine, as would (wild) rice.

1 quart chopped tomatoes and their juice
1 onion, chopped
1 cup red wine, plus a splash more to deglaze the sausage pan
1 pound sausage links
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 19-ounce can Cannellini beans and their juice
3 cups cooked barley (or another grain)
½ teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
Parmesan cheese to serve, optional

Cook the sausage links in a kettle over medium-high heat for about 12 minutes, turning frequently (or according to package instructions). Transfer the cooked sausage to a plate, cut each link in half and set them aside.

Put the olive oil in the now-empty sausage pan and add the onion. Saute for about five minutes.

In a large-ish kettle, dump in the tomatoes, red wine, and the sauteed onions. (Splash some extra red wine into the dirty sausage-and-onion pan and cook for a minute or two, scraping the bottom to loosen all the flavorful bits. Add the wine-y, oily juice to the pan of tomatoes.) Simmer over medium heat, uncovered, for about 45 minutes until a bunch of the liquid has evaporated and the contents have cooked down a bit. (If you want the final dish to be more soup-like, cook it for less time.)

Add the sausage chunks, barley, beans, salt, pepper, and oregano. Simmer for another five minutes. Taste to correct seasonings.

This is delicious served with a flurry of Parmesan and some slices of warm, buttered toast.

Mr. Handsome likes to invent things to make life simpler. He always says he should’ve been born in—

Wait. What period was it? Hang on a sec while I call him up on the phone:

Me, with zilch introduction: You always said you should’ve been born in a different time period. What was it?

Him: Huh?

Me: Just answer the question.

Him: I don’t know. The eighteen hundreds, or the colonial period.

Me: Why?

Him: I don’t know. Do we have to have this conversation right now?

Silence.

Him: I guess we do. Uh, because my skill set is suited for that period? I don’t know. Don’t quote me.

Irritated pause. Banging hammer in the background.

Him: Is that it?

Me: Yep! Thanks. Bye.

So there you have it: the colonial period.

A small sample of his inventions include:

1. When we lived in Nicaragua we were practically back in colonial times. We built our house with nary a power tool in sight. (This means we sawed the beams by hand. And we planed the beams by hand. Our hands just about fell off.) We had to haul our water from a well that was 100 yards away, down in a ravine, and instead of doing what the other men did when they got stuck with the women’s work of carrying water—they hauled it in five-gallon buckets, the heavy buckets bouncing awkwardly against their legs (the women carried buckets on their heads)—my inventive husband crafted a wooden yolk to wear across his shoulders, a rope dangling down from each end and a bucket hooked to the end of the rope. He carried hundreds upon hundreds of buckets of water that way.

2. Also in Nicaragua, we had a hammock by our bed for Baby Yo-Yo. Mr. Handsome strapped a belt to it so that we could lay down and rest while periodically tugging on the belt to keep the baby asleep, or to make him go back to sleep. I liked that one.

3. Currently, my concrete counter top has a drain hole in it underneath the drainer. This way I don’t need the (so often moldy, slimy, gunked-up) rubber mat that drainers sit on. I can just set my soppy dishes directly into the drainer and the water drips down onto the counter and then runs into the little drain hole. It’s one of my favorite things about my kitchen.

Those are just three random examples. There are dozens more.

Note: Not all of our life is ease and comfort. Among the many glitches is our stairless attic. To get to the third floor (storage space only), a person (never me, always Mr. Handsome) has to shimmy up through the little hole in the ceiling using whatever is at hand—door/chimney/oddball furniture—to give a boost up. It’s crazy difficult and drives me mad when I think about it for too long.

Another area that Mr. Handsome likes to fiddle with and improve upon is My Kitchen At Canning Time.

(Alert! Alert! Random, totally off-track thought: Is Mr. Handsome’s name sexist? I always hate it when men refer to their wives as “my beautiful wife,” as though that’s their main asset. But yet I’ve gone and named my husband based on his appearance. So I must be sexist? Discuss.)

Back to canning and Mr. Husband (the Handsome One).

We often butt heads over his constant piddling with my methods (ha! we’re buttheads!), but lots of times it works out fine. And it’s only fair that he has a say in the canning process seeing as he does fifty percent of the work (or more), depending on the project at hand. He hooks up hoses so I can have (hot, sometimes) water on the porch, moves tables around, creates makeshift tarp roofs to keep out the sun, and so on. Last year when we did applesauce he came up with a new apple-coring method. (His apple-cutting/smashing method wasn’t as successful. You can’t win them all!)

Last Saturday morning, applesauce-making day, I ran errands in town, leaving Mr. Handsome at home to set up the whole process. The night before (while I was living it up in town with my girlfriends, eating enormous dinners and attending a magnificent theater production of Wild Oats), he had already washed the four bushels of apples.

When I returned home mid-morning, already there were bowls of steaming applesauce, kettles of chopped apples burbling away on the stove, and more cooked apples in the process of getting cranked through the mill.

Except they weren’t getting cranked. They were getting drilled.

Eeeeeeee! Eeeeeeee! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

I stared, confused. Mr. Handsome pointed to the mill, his face wreathed in grins. With just one trigger-happy finger, the cooked apples were getting sucked down into the mill and the hot sauce came pouring down the shoot.

This is what happens when carpenters make applesauce.

We got the applesauce done in record-time this year—about nine hours total. All the kids worked hard—hauling buckets of water, running more jars up from the basement, squeezing the drill, filling and lidding jars, cutting apples—but this kid busted his tail all day long.

I didn’t touch a knife the entire day and I never even stirred a kettle of apples. This, my friends, is my definition of progress.

*Some of the photos courtesy of Yo-Yo Boy.

This same time, years previous: Peach and/or Nectarine Tart (I HIGHLY recommend the nectarine version) and Thoughts on Breastfeeding

After years of canning Red Haven peaches, writing a guest post on the topic, and putting up four bushels of the fruit this year, I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t really like them after all. They can up well enough—cleanly yellow, sweet, and firm-tender—but I’ve always thought them rather bland and flavorless when fresh.

But then at the Fresh Air picnic, Mrs. Chairwoman raved to me about Glo Haven peaches. Since I’m so impressionable, I then had to go out and buy a half bushel. Oh my, oh my, oh MY. They tasted good! Sweet and juicy and wonderfully peachy, just how peaches ought to taste. For experiment’s sake, I canned several quarts (the fruit is rosier, so it tints the water an enchanting pale pink), froze a couple quarts, and we ate the rest fresh.

Remember how I said I don’t really have a favorite way to prepare fresh peaches? The reason was, perhaps, because I was working with an inferior peach (though still a fine canning peach, mind you). Nothing I ever would’ve made with them would’ve wowed me.

That has changed, however. I now have found The Very Best Way (according to yours truly) to serve fresh, peachy peaches.

Two ways, in fact. Things are looking up.

Way Number One: peach cornmeal cobbler.

I tried the recipe several weeks ago when I was swimming in Red Havens, and while I loved the cobbler part, the fruit was only so-so.

Then on Saturday, while in the thick of applesauce making, I tried the cobbler again. Twice. The first time I forgot the cornmeal, and since that’s kind of the whole point of the dessert, I had to go and make it again. That meant I had two large cobblers sitting on the kitchen counter.

I alerted my brother’s household to the cobbler overload. If you stop by, bring a couple containers to take some home in, I directed. He came over, of course, and when he did, he had a whole bag of containers in hand. (Is this the definition of an optimist or just the sign of a hungry man?) “I didn’t know which size you’d want,” he said impishly.

Later, some friends stopped by and dug in. Spoons flashed and lips smacked. By bedtime both pans were empty and I was wishing I had saved me a few extry peaches for a Sunday cobbler. I just may need to buy another half-bushel.

Way Number Two to use these yummy peaches: fresh peach ice cream.

This recipe comes from Mrs. Chairwoman herself. I called her up a couple days after the picnic (and nearly gave her a panic attack because she thought I was at home playing with peaches instead of taking Fresh Air Boy to the bus to go back to NY, but I assured her that Mr. Handsome was serving drop-off duty, thus allowing me to attend to my peaches and cream) to beg the recipe and she kindly read it off to me.

It’s different then most ice creams in that the recipe calls for cornstarch and flour as thickener, uses the whole egg (not just the yolk), and contains more milk than cream. As a result, the ice cream is less heavy and perhaps a bit icy. This bothers me not one wit. In fact, I think it tastes even better this way—lighter, summery, and peachy sweet.

Peach Cornmeal Cobbler
Adapted from Deb at Smitten Kitchen

I increased the cobbler topping by fifty percent and omitted the blueberries. While blueberries (or red raspberries) would be a delicious addition, I wanted a purely peachy affair.

For the fruit:
6 cups thick (peeled) peach slices
2/3 cups brown sugar
2 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons lemon juice (bottled is fine)
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt

Toss the peaches with the lemon juice. Combine the other ingredients in a small bowl and then toss with the peaches. Dump the peaches into a 9 x 13 baking pan.

For the biscuit:
1 cup, plus 2 tablespoons, flour
1/3 cup cornmeal
4 ½ tablespoons brown sugar, packed
2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/3 teaspoon salt
4 ½ tablespoons butter
3/4 cup buttermilk
1-2 tablespoons demerara sugar, optional

Stir together the flour, cornmeal, brown sugar, baking powder, and salt. Using your fingers, crumble in the butter. Stir in the buttermilk. Dollop the biscuit dough on top of the peaches, about twelve dollops, more or less. Sprinkle the biscuits with the demerara sugar.

Bake the cobbler at 350 degrees for 30 to 40 minutes, or until the biscuits are quite brown and the fruit is bubbling madly.

Serve warm or at room temperature, plain, with cold milk, or with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Updated on August 22, 2010: Added some demerara sugar to the top of the biscuits before baking. Lovely.

Updated on March 15, 2011: Substitute sour cherries for the peaches and swoon.

Fresh Peach Ice Cream
Adapted from Mrs. Fresh Air Chairwoman

I halved the original recipe, but even so, this makes two quarts of base, twice as much as what I could put in my ice cream maker (the perfect amount for a four-quart, hand-crank machine). You can halve the recipe again, or, like I did, just make the full amount and freeze the ice cream on two separate occasions. (I think you could even freeze the extra quart of base if you wanted to.)

2 cups milk, divided
2 cups cream
1 1/4 cups sugar, divided
2 eggs, beaten
2 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 ½ cups crushed peaches

Stir together the crushed peaches and ½ cup sugar. Set aside.

Scald 1 3/4 cups milk. While the milk is heating up, stir together the flour, cornstarch, salt, and 1/4 cup milk in a small bowl. When the milk is hot, whisk in the flour-milk slurry and cook for one minute, stirring steadily. Remove the kettle from the heat.

Whisk the beaten eggs with 3/4 cup sugar. Temper the eggs with the hot milk: add about a half cup of the hot milk to the eggs, a little at a time, whisking steadily. Pour the tempered eggs into the kettle, still whisking. Return the kettle to the heat and cook for one more minute. Whisk, whisk, whisk. Remove the kettle from the heat and add the cream.

Pour the mixture through a fine-mesh strainer to remove the solids. Stir in the sugary peaches. Pour the mixture into a half gallon container and store in the refrigerator until it is completely cooled.

Freeze according to your ice cream maker’s instructions (see head note).

Yield: 2 ½ to 3 quarts of ice cream.

This same time, years previous: Tomato and Red Wine Sauce and Vegetable Beef Soup, Mustard Eggs, and Russian Pancakes