BENT MOUNTAIN BARTERING

You've heard me speak of my neighbor, Ed.  Ed and his wife Francois (the French Chick) live on Laurel Creek, backing up against Poor Mountain.  Ed's the guy that everyone calls when there's some sort of action on the Mountain.

When Larry shot his first buck last year dressed to the nines on the way out to dinner for his birthday,  a call went out to Ed.  "Ed", he pleaded, "we have about 5 minutes before we meet the kids and grandmother in town for dinner at Luigi's.  And I just shot a ten-pointer. And I'm wearing a coat and tie. "  Ed knew just what to do; and we delivered the "goods" on the way down the road.

Ed has taken an interest in my chickens.  And Francois being the ever fabulous french chef, in my eggs.  So Ed brings over table scraps and we feed them to Alice and company.  He brings over fresh beets and corn and delicious tomatoes that we barter for eggs.  Our 17 feathered friends are currently laying about 13 eggs daily, and we only consume a half dozen or so.  Less as Cameron takes back off for Hawaii in a couple of weeks.  So I have a commodity.  Ha!  This week I traded about 4 dozen fresh farm eggs for some beautiful beets and a bag full of maters.

I found a recipe that we  hope to use and abuse.  Goat cheese and leeks and roasted beet tart.  Wow.  Yum.

You can try it too.  You just need to find something to trade with Ed.

Beet, Leek and Goat Cheese Tart

1 pie dough/tart shell- (par baked, see below for recipe)
1 ea roasted beet (about 8 oz-see below)
2 oz crumbled goat cheese
2 Tbsp pine nuts, toasted
1 large leek, sliced and cleaned (cooked about 1 cup)
1 Tbsp olive oil
6 eggs
1.5 oz 1/2 & 1/2 (or milk)
salt and pepper
2 Tbsp fresh herbs, chopped (I used parsley, basil and thyme)

To cook the beets:
Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees. Wrap the fresh, cleaned beets in a foil package tightly and
roast in the oven for about an hour. The beets are done when they can be easily pierced
with a fork. Do not cut the beets first or all the juice will run out when they cook. When
done, and cool enough to handle, the beet skin should easily slip off. Hint; wear latex
gloves unless you want your hands to be “beet red.” Cut the beets into 1/2 lengthwise and
then slice into half rounds.

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees. Make the pie dough and par-bake the shell (see instructions
below). Remove from the oven and allow to cool. Leave the oven at 375 if you are going
to finish making the tart now.

Clean the leeks. Leeks can have a lot of mud and dirt on them (see photo above). Cut off
most of green part of leek and slice in half. Slice thinly, crosswise. Put in a colander and
rinse well with cold water. Make sure to get all the dirt off.
Heat a large saute pan and add the olive oil. Add the leeks and saute until soft.

Heat a small saute pan to medium and add the pine nuts. Keep them moving until they are
toasted (about 2 minutes). Remove from hot pan so they stop cooking.
Spread the cooked leeks over the bottom of the par-cooked tart. Lay out the sliced cooked
beets on top of the leeks. Top with crumbled goat cheese and toasted pine nuts.

Scramble the eggs with the 1/2 & 1/2 and salt and pepper. Pour the egg mixture over the
vegetables and cheese in the tart pan. Sprinkle the chopped herbs on top.
Bake at 375 for 25 min or until eggs are set.
Pie Dough (makes one 10" tart pan)
1 3/4 cups flour (about 8 oz wt.)
1.5 sticks unsalted butter (6 oz wt.) cut into small pieces
pinch salt
5 Tbsp ice water
Tart Pan with removable bottomRecipes from FFF CCChef.com
Copyright formerchef.com 2009
Directions for making in food processor (this is how I did it).
Fit bowl with metal blade. Add flour, butter and salt to bowl. Put on the lid and process in
short bursts, about 10 times to break up the butter into the flour. With the processor on,
quickly pulsing, add the water through the tube in the lid into the bowl until the mixture
looks like oatmeal. Remove and form into a small cake.
If you don’t have a food processor and want to make it by hand, that works too. Just
follow the same steps you would for pie dough; cut the butter into the flour, working it
through by hand until it becomes like coarse meal or breadcrumbs. Mix in the water with
a fork until it’s incorporated and the dough comes together in a soft ball.
Refrigerate the dough for half an hour and then roll it out on a lightly floured surface.
Once it is rolled out, put it in the pan and pressed the dough into the edges, pulling off
any excess.
The shell needs to be partially baked before adding the filling. To keep the center of the
crust from puffing up and cracking during baking, you’ll want to weigh it down. Cut a
piece of parchment paper or foil to fit the bottom of the tart pan. Tip; fold a square in 1/2
and then 1/2 again to make a smaller square. Cut from edge to edge in a semi-circle equal
to 1/2 the diameter of your pan. Unfold and voila! You have a perfect circle to fit. See my
post on Sweet Tart Dough for photos on how to do this.
Pierce the bottom of the dough with a fork and put the paper on top.
Weigh down with pie weights or beans.
Bake for about 12 minutes or until the curst begins to set. Don't let it get too brown
because it's going to keep cooking later. Remove from oven, and carefully remove the
paper and beans. Add the filling (see above) and finish baking.
Notes;
To save some time you can use a pre-made pie dough. Pillsbury makes a decent one.
Trader Joe's sells cooked fresh beets, vacuum sealed in the produce section.
Quite a bit of this dish can be done a day in advance. The pie dough can be made in
advance. The beets and leeks can be cooked the day before. The pine nuts can be toasted
and once cooled, placed in a dry, sealed container or plastic bag.

  

MUSINGS FROM A RELUCTANT EMPTY NESTER

"Soooo......what are you going to do NOW?"

I've been hearing this for three entire years, ever since our son Cameron started taking classes at the local community college instead of following the path of many of his peers towards graduation from a public high school, cavorting off to University and the subsequent amazing life that supposedly follows thereafter.  He is our firstborn;  i.e. WE DO EXPERIMENTAL PARENTING ON HIM.  I have wanted to reply  "What, he's going to start making his own nutritious meals and doing his own laundry and making his own Dr. appointments and getting to bed at a decent hour without my constant reminding?  Have you forgotten he's got a sister who's 17 months younger, practically still a BABY?"

The truth is, I should have been letting go a lot earlier.  For my sake.  So now, Baby Sister has gone off to University and Cameron is headed back out to do missions work in HAWAII.  And guess what?  That leaves old Larry and me back here on the farm.  I've always had an issue with people calling their house a farm when it's not; it's a home in the country.  Seemed sort of pretentious and the littlest of  white lies.  Conjured up thoughts of overalls and manual labor done outside with a pitchfork.  I'm all sorts of literal that way.  But I've decided to start calling it a farm now because very few of our family ARE home. And we have chickens.  I'm pretty sure that qualifies the whole farm thing.  

So what do I DO NOW?  Well, I got a Kindle for my birthday.  I've kept it well fed, since I have very few other mouths to feed.  That's been kind of fun.  Yes, it seems a bit extravagant to me because all you do is push a button and presto!  you have a new read.  Sure it hits up your Amazon account but that's not real money, right?  You never have to watch it slip quickly through your fingers.

Larry has waxed up my Grandmommy Helen's 64 Impala and we are hitting the back roads of Floyd County.  We couldn't drive it for the past 20 years because there are no seatbelts in the back.  Not a problem these days, not with the nest empty.  And if we are feeling especially frisky?  Sometimes we even drive it down the mountain and all the way to church.

REPURPOSE, RECLAIM, SUSTAIN

I acquired my first antique when I was in the third grade, an old tea chest bought somewhere along the coast of Maine.  I still have it and Cameron uses it in his room as a bed-side table.  The kids in my family grew up poking around in antique stores up and down the east coast and later all over Europe when my family re-located to Germany and France.  I thought that all families antiqued together.

The first gift that Larry gave me (when he was 16 and I was 17) was a hundred year old Limoge locket bought on our first date at an antique store in Clinton, NJ.  Old stuff and the joy of the hunt is in our family's DNA.

When we started buying land sometimes the major selling point was an old barn, a historic fixer-upper house or a really cool old tobacco barn full of ancient walnut slabs, wormy chestnut planks, and tobacco drying slats.  Much of our home is decorated not in period antiques, but in repurposed stuff.  The bar in our family room is made of one of those walnut slabs and propped up by a super thick grape vine, repurposed as a walking stick and then repurposed again as a bar holder upper.

Sometimes things have to be torn down to begin a new life.  (I know, all sorts of spiritual connotations here.)
Realizing that a barn structure is dangerous and can't be saved doesn't by any means ready it for the burn pile.
Floyd Virginia Land recently bought a 100 acre piece of property known as Sugar Run Farm.   The property has a great picnic shelter and captured spring as well as pasture, woods, and horse trails.   We tried to save the wonderful old barn but realized that the structure was unsafe and the foundation was no good.  So we called in our good friend Mike Whiteside from Black Dog Salvage in Roanoke to carefully tear down the barn and reclaim the wood for bookcases or cabinets or flooring or some other cool architectural feature/creation.

Reclaiming may be a hip concept right about now.  We have all suffered through a generation of  waste and disposability.  I believe we are craving history and a connection to things that have a connection to another simpler time.  "Stuff" just isn't cutting it anymore.  We want objets d'art, not mountains of plastic.  So soapbox time. Reclaim something.  Find a way to share your unwanted items with others.  Create something out of something else, even if it doesn't make sense to your neighbors.   Get your art groove on; think outside the box.  Not because the concept is cool but because you are.    

THE LITTLE WHITE LIE ABOUT AC ON BENT MOUNTAIN

Full disclosure:  Yes, we have it.  Sometimes we use it.  Yes, we could live without it.  And the summer of 2011 has had it cranked on Bottom Creek Lane.

This particular mid July morning I'm feeling blessed to be cool.  I did go outside earlier to play with my chickens (that's what farmers do, right?  Play with the chickens?) and the morning heat took my breath.  Usually Bent Mountain summertime is famous for cool evenings and even cooler mornings, flanked by a bit of glorious warm sunshine mid-day.  Many summers we don't turn on the AC at all; in fact we become a little prideful and obsessive and leave it off even on days where we might be a bit less cranky if we were to succumb to the evils of canned air.    The deal is, we kind of think of it like that.

 I want all the windows wide open, ceiling fans whirring and what we have of sheer draperies blowing in and out of the room and getting stuck to the screen.  Much less claustrophobic and those breezes remind me of summers long ago on the River in Minnesota.  Problem is, summer in  southwestern Virginia is not exactly summer in upper Minnesota.  We Southern women take mid-day naps under the fan in our slips for a reason.

Actually I don't even think I own a slip, but a friend who was a marvelous storyteller used to spin wild ones about the women in her Georgian family who took to the bed mid-day (probably after sipping bloody marys much of the morning) and luxuriated the afternoon away on the sleeping porch under the fan in their slips.  Just sounds so civilized. And twisted.  I like that.

So, I've told you the lie.  Now I'll tell you the truth.  Summer on the county line between hot and sticky Roanoke and cool and fictional Floyd County is wonderful.  We do appreciate the 10 degree dip in temperature up here at 2,700 feet.  But when you are talking 107 degree heat indexes in Roanoke you will probably be looking at 97 up here on the mountain.  And you may need to crank up the air conditioning for a week or two.  Then you can go right back to wearing your slip under the ceiling fan.  And get Faulkner or someone to write a story about you but make sure he changes your name to Blanche.  Or Mary Something or Another.  We've got to keep that sultry Southern girl image perpetuated.

HISTORY OF THE BOTTOM CREEK GORGE COMMUNITY

I'm going to steal today (well, steal with permission) from a lovely book written about the community that used to live on the top of the mountainside on what is now owned and protected forever by the Nature Conservancy, for which most residents (old and new) of Bent Mountain are grateful.  The land owned by Floyd Virginia Land called the Knolls adjoins this protected 1,657 acres that boasts the second highest waterfall in Virginia forming the headwaters of the Roanoke River.

The book was written by Genevieve Craighead Henderson who grew up "on the creek" and is a tribute to her parents, relatives and friends who sacrificed and worked the then remote land, perhaps in a better time.

"Residents of this area have also stood at the top of the mountainside and looked across Bottom Creek Gorge at the beautiful waterfall -- Noah Hall did on summer days as he, with his horse or his hoe, worked out a small corn patch or a few rows of green beans on the hillside opposite the falls and probably wished for a cool dip in the rushing water far below."

"As you stand by the edge of Bottom Creek and watch the clear mountain water rushing by, and try to see the "endangered species" of fish, remember you are not the first to do so.  Bottom Creek boys did this many years ago, some even catching rainbow trout to be cooked by their mothers for supper.  When fishing season opened,many of these same boys stood along the banks of the creek and watched the "city slickers" in the hip waders and fancy fishing equipment pull fish after fish from the dark green pools of water along this creek.  Sometimes the girls got to go fishing, too, but with a string on a pole and a safety pin!  Lucky was the young boy who found a real fishing line and hook that had gotten tangled in the brush along the edge of the creek and left behind by a fisherman with more money than patience. Even more lucky was he when he slipped back to the creek after dark, along paths around the boulders only familiar to the local residents, and threw this new line and hook (and juicy worm that was dug along the patch to the creek) into "the big kettle" or "the little kettle" where the big fish had been hiding all day."

Thanks, Genevieve.  I think I needed to go back to that day of simply fishing today.

PARTY WITH A LIGHT SHOW, HOPEFULLY

Good morning, bloggees.  You are most highly regarded.  Today my goal is to entice you to drive up Bent Mountain Saturday evening , June 25th to share some BBQ, a bonfire and a brilliant sunset with us.  The BBQ and bonfire will be supplied by the Florins.  The sunset, that most gorgeous of artwork, will be courtesy of the Creator.  I am notoriously self-obsessed but I do thank Him regularly for delighting ME and ME alone with the ever-hanging beauty of nature but I do expect He'll be more than happy to show up around 8:41 and dazzle you all as well.

We'll start hanging out around 6.  Bring a sweater, a lawn chair, adult beverages and a fiddle if you are so inclined.  We've got the rest.  There may or may not be a bathroom so take care of business before you head up if you are shy that way.     

Directions:  221 S to R on County Line to bear R on Patterson to L on King Bros. Open house on R.

PINING FOR SIMPLER TIMES: BENT MOUNTAIN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

The Florin family is at a crossroads.  Actually, it's probably just Mama Florin who is stuck in the middle of the street.  The rest of the family seems to be moving along just as they should be.  We all raise our children to become responsible members of society, to be healthy and independent of us.  And I believe that God has even fashioned something into the DNA of a child that prompts them towards that self-reliance.  If you have raised a child you have undoubtedly experienced what I'm talking about....at about age two....at about age 11....at about age 16.  Sometimes the progression is easy and organic, and sometimes it is downright nasty.  But most kids do learn how to breathe outside of the womb, and most learn at some point that they are not their parents.  Some even learn to respect the wisdom of their doddering aged elders. 

We did have a slight advantage over the rest of the world before thrusting our children into the deep, vast unknown.  Sweet Bent Mountain Elementary School.  The powers that be tried for the last 30 years to shut down the smallest of Roanoke County Schools...which was finally accomplished about a year ago.  

Bent Mountain Elementary wasn't exactly economically feasible in this age where not much is.  But oh, what a model.  When Cameron entered kindergarten in 1997 he joined about 66 other local kids... in the entire school.  The school was not only a microcosm of our Bent Mountain neighborhood such that it is, but actually a pretty good petri-dish for all of American society.  His class of 18 and most every class that followed or came before was completely diverse: racially, socio-economically, religiously.  And...guess what, America?  It completely worked. 

Emma followed into kindergarten the following year, she and six of her best friends.  Her class wasn't quite as diverse as it was much smaller and that skewed the demographic somewhat.  She was the only girl in the third through fifth grades;  because they were so small in number they combined with the class a year younger for some of their subjects..  But for part of the day her class was just six.  Emma was the only girl and she sat in a fancy wing chair while the boys all sat at her feet on the floor.  If you know my daughter you will understand how formative that was to her self-esteem.  She was and always has been "the Go-to girl" and "The Boss".  Of "THE WORLD". 

But good things can't last forever and my children eventually graduated from the fifth grade.  They went on to middle school at small private schools, mostly because both my husband and I moved from small schools to a LARGE public school at the tail end of high school.  Larry and I met and fell in love partly because we found each other in the sea of a huge high school where we both were overwhelmed and somewhat lost, not at all understanding the whole jock, freak, popular, geek thing.  We had come from small schools where we had solidarity BECAUSE of being different people, not lumped into a group of young people who we really had nothing in common with, because we were different.

Anyway, I am completely thankful for Bent Mountain Elementary: for the wonderful teachers who made do with second hand copies (something already on the back) and not so much money for field trips.  For the parents, who not only had to join the PTA, but to hold some major position during their tenure.  For their classmates, who still love one another and will forever, even as they move away from the mountain and pursue their dreams.  I am in a period of reminiscing...as I try to transition into this new phase of empty nest.  I reminisce, and I am very thankful.