The road to Copake

I've been thinking a lot lately about how we ended up in Copake. Whenever I think through the whole process of how we got here, it becomes a very long story that is hard to tell in one blog post (so stay tuned for a few posts that will tell the tale). For the most part though, we bought the house because we knew that as Mom got older she would need a safe place to live, where someone would be able to keep an eye on her, and she wouldn't have to pay rent or a mortgage. She didn't want to live in the city, and we weren't ready to move to the country full time. So we came up with the idea of pooling our money and buying a two-family "weekend" house. Mom lives there full-time, and we visit most weekends. So far it has worked out well. We see Mom more often than we used to, and she and Vivi get to spend a lot of quality time together. It's great to see them watching cartoons together, baking muffins, and planting flowers in the yard. Things that I didn't get to do with my grandmother.

I did, however, grow up in a multigenerational family. Shortly after my family relocated from Long Island to upstate, my grandfather retired and he joined us. As my sisters and I got bigger, our small ranch house got pretty tight for all of us. There were times when it was difficult to have that many people in one house, and there definitely times that I wished we could be a "normal" family of just my dad, mom, and two sisters. But I found myself thinking about Pop-Pop a lot lately. He lived most of his life in the Bronx and settled into country life in his 60s. From my perspective as a 6-year old, he seemed to fit right in. He and my mother built a small barn for the ponies we decided to raise. he and my dad put up the fencing, and he had a pond dug behind the house. He sort of became a gentleman farmer. While I was struggling with the chicken wire for my garden fence, I found myself thinking about what he had accomplished, and I was wishing he was still around so I could ask him a few questions.

So it was with a smile on my face that I recently read Ben Greenman's piece in the NY Times Magazine about his parents' wanting to buy a two-family house with him and his family in Brooklyn. It made me think about growing up with a grandparent in the house, and about Vivi being able to live part time with her grandmother. Fred and I had many discussions about sharing a house with my mother and how it would all work out. Six months later I wouldn't change a thing. So Ben, take the plunge. You and your whole family will be happy you did it.

Sunday Supper: Arroz con Pollo

Sundays come too quickly at the Copake house. There's always something we didn’t get to—planting the cucumber seeds in the garden or the daisies next to the stone wall. Carl, Vivi, and I like to prolong our stay as much as possible so as to get the most out of the house and the yard. We usually leave after dinner, around 6:00 or 7:00. This past weekend we had one major chore that had to get done—sweeping and mopping all the floors. Every floor in the house, including the kitchen, is wood so this is no small feat. When it comes to a division of labor, Carl usually does more of the cooking and I do more of the cleaning. We both find our respective duties therapeutic. When he asked me would I prefer to cook or clean, he sensed my hesitation and immediately volunteered for the less desirable of the tasks. He gave me the chef’s toque and a recipe of arroz con pollo.

Carl’s mom Kay lives in the apartment attached to the house and is part of our dinner planning each weekend. Sometimes she even convinces us to let her cook for a change. The chicken dinner was a joint effort of sorts. Kay had chicken thighs in her fridge that she donated to the recipe. Carl had made some chicken stock weeks earlier that I was able to use, and the onion, peppers, lemon, canned tomatoes, and rice came from the local Super Y grocery store in Great Barrington, Mass. It’s a fairly simple recipe involving browning the thighs for about 5 minutes a side, followed by adding your vegetables (peppers, onions) to soften, the stock, and the rice last. This should be a one-pot meal but I didn’t have a Dutch oven to go from stove to oven. I browned the chicken in batches in a cast-iron skillet. Up to the point of adding the stock and rice, I continued to use the skillet. Once I had to put the chicken back into the mixture for cooking in the oven, I transferred all the ingredients to a Pyrex baking dish. This worked totally fine. I covered it with tin foil and baked for 30 minutes. The rice softened perfectly and the chicken became flavorful sucking up the juice of the tomatoes, the stock, and the flavor of the peppers, onions, and garlic.

As the oven timer buzzed, Carl just finished mopping the kitchen floor—the last one of the house. We all sat down to eat (rather slowly) enjoying our last minutes at the house before packing up the car. Kay volunteered to clean as we made our rounds of closing windows and packing bags, including our leftovers, for the trip home. This week we didn’t leave until 8:00 p.m. Where does the time go?

Here's the recipe. (Adapted from the ivillage.com recipe newsletter)
Serves 4

2 tbsp olive oil
8 chicken thighs
1 onion, finely sliced
2 red bell peppers
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
one 14.5-oz. can chopped tomatoes, drained
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp chopped fresh thyme
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 bay leaf
1 cup long-grain rice
pinch of saffron threads
3 1/4 cups chicken stock
2 tbsp tomato paste
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
salt and freshly ground black pepper
3/4 cup frozen peas, rinsed


Preheat the oven to 350°F. Heat 1 tbsp of the oil in a large flameproof casserole dish over high heat. Add the chicken thighs and brown, turning once, about 5 minutes. Transfer chicken to a plate and set aside.

Pour the remaining 1 tbsp oil to the casserole and reduce the heat to medium. Add the onion and cook about 3 minutes, until softened. Stir in the green and red peppers and garlic and cook for 5 minutes, until they soften. Add the tomatoes, smoked paprika, thyme, oregano, and bay leaf, then stir in the rice. Stir for 1-2 minutes.

Crumble in the saffron, then stir in the stock, tomato paste, and lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper.
Return the chicken thighs to the casserole, nestling them in the rice. Cover and bake for 15 minutes.

Add the peas and bake for 10 minutes more, or until the rice is tender and has completely absorbed the cooking liquid. Serve immediately, while still hot.

Spring has sprung

This is our first spring in Copake,and we've decided to take a wait and see approach to planting. There are some beautiful trees and shrubs throughout the yard, and we're curious to see how they bloom. So we decided not to plant too much, and instead see what is already out there.

The first thing to show up--right on schedule--are the bulbs: crocus, tulips, and daffodils. They lined the stone wall along the driveway. Next came the forsythia, or floorslithia, as Vivi called it. She and I took a walk in the backyard on this rainy Sunday morning, and snipped a few blooms and branches to bring a little bit of Spring into the house.

Enjoy!

I'm back and ready to cook

It's been way too long since I've posted and a lot has happened since then. First off, my fridge died. We've been living without a full-sized fridge for nearly two weeks. The crisper started freezing the veggies months ago, but the repair man wouldn't come back to fix it (see ya in small claims court!). And then one night I got home and the entire fridge smelled of burning-plastic. I opened the door and saw burn marks on the bottom shelf, and part of the door was melted. Fred and I pulled the fridge away from the wall, unplugged it, and thanked our lucky stars that the entire apartment didn't burn down (yes, there was a little bit of drama).

We moved the food to a cooler for two days before giving it to my sister to eat (Hey, Kath how was that aged gouda?). Then we bought a small bar fridge that is now in the dining room. We haven't really been cooking since we can't keep too much food in the apartment. So we've been ordering a lot of take out—thank God we finally got a Thai restaurant in Washington Heights!—and making really simple things like pasta and quesadillas. But the new fridge comes Thursday and I can't wait to restock it and start cooking again.

The other big news is that we bought a house in upstate New York. I'll be posting quite a bit about the journey we took that got us to Copake, N.Y. But right now all I want to say is that the kitchen upstate is HUGE, and we can't wait to start cooking. There's also a giant garden in the backyard that is just calling out for some TLC. I don't know anything about gardening so I've been checking out my upstate neighbor Margaret Roach's blog, Awaytogarden.com, for inspiration. If anyone has any tips on starting a garden, please feel free to send them along.

Once the new fridge is full, a slew of new posts will be coming your way. I've been clipping and saving some recipes that I'll be testing over the next few weeks. I'll also be posting about learning about rototilling, starting a compost heap, and growing my own food from seeds.