Journeys Around the Sun: Hal Borland

In my previous post, I talked about a favorite “essay-a-day” natural history book, Edwin Way Teale’s A Walk Through the Year. Today, I’m continuing on the topic of almanac-format nature books.

A similar book, in a similar vintage, is Hal Borland’s Twelve Moons of the Year (New York: Knopf, 1979).



Borland wrote a weekly natural history or “outdoors” editorial in the Sunday edition of the New York Times for 35 years. This book, which he was finishing when he died, is a collection of those brief editorials—so well written . . . so well written.

I’ve been dipping into this book especially, since he writes so eloquently of our desire in late winter to look for signs of impending spring. Wasps waking and flying groggily about on a prematurely warm day. The courtship of owls and squirrels. The lengthening days. Rising sap. The hope encapsulated in the buds of trees. And the first tentative, brief bird songs.

“There are things to be heard if one is at all attentive. At noontime on a sunny day the dooryard sparrows begin to test a few phrases of remembered song. The chickadees, which will lisp a greeting any winter day, now extend their songs, simple though they are. The nuthatches still say nothing but yank, but they say it more often and with a new intonation. From the woodland the male cardinal whistles as though he really means it.

“. . . Spring is not yet at hand, but there is change, and there are subtle stirrings here and there, if we forget the calendar and listen.” (“Subtle Signs of Spring,” February 15, pp. 46-47.)



He notes a softening of the blue jay’s raucous voice:

“But when February comes and daylight begins to linger, the jays begin to feel, perhaps down in their hollow bones, that life is good and soon will be even better. They whisper this, at first, to themselves. Then they say it aloud, but softly. It is a wholly new note, actually a two-note salute to the season. It is almost musical. It really is the blue jay’s prelude to a love song, a sentimental secret the secretive jay can no longer keep to himself.” (“The Secret,” February 8, p. 41.)



It’s not going to make spring come any sooner, but reading this helps me remember that I’m not alone in looking for “signs,” and that people have always yearned for spring this way.

Journeys Around the Sun: Edwin Way Teale

It’s still early enough in the year to be thinking of the passage of time, as I do at every new year—jeez, it’s hard to believe it’s the year 2014! I suppose part of my pondering might also have something to do with this year’s lengthy onslaught of snow and bitter cold—I can’t help looking for signs the spring is coming.

And it is. Even if we’re getting yet another dump of ice and snow this weekend!

My evidence? Well, haven’t you been hearing cardinals singing outside your windows in the mornings? I have. And it’s a damn good song they’re singing!

I’ve been dipping into some of my favorite books that celebrate the annual cycle. A recent comment on my blog suggested to me a book by the great natural history writer Donald Culross Peattie, An Almanac for Moderns. (Thanks, Tina, I’m going to check it out!) Peattie’s books describing America’s trees are exquisite blends of science, poetics, and philosophy. Peattie educated his reader while ensouling his subjects.

Of course, the famous quartet of books by Edwin Way Teale is a monument to the changing American seasons, and I’ve written about them before.

But Teale’s more compact, and personal celebration of the changing seasons is A Walk Through the Year (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1978). In it, he writes a brief essay for each day of the year, describing some natural event that happened on his farm in Connecticut. He intended it as a companion to A Naturalist Buys an Old Farm, which tells about the property he purchased later in life, Trail Wood, which he treasured as a natural area.



A Walk Through the Year is pure Teale. In it, one of his later books, he shares his reflections on his and his wife, Nelly’s observations of nature at Trail Wood. It’s a gentle and pleasant conversation, as if you and the aging Teales were chatting in their living room, sitting around their cozy fireplace on some evening after a blizzard. “Guess what we saw at one of our bird feeders yesterday!” And “I was walking on the lane to the road and saw a red fox—guess what it was doing!”

To show you why I’ve been dipping into this book, and to celebrate the springtime we’re all hungry for, here’s an excerpt from A Walk Through the Year. Because the Teales were nuts about birds, I’ve chosen one about birds—specifically, red-winged blackbirds:

“February 28. This is the sound we longed for, dreamed about, looked forward to in the darkest days of winter. Rising and subsiding, becoming a storm of mingled voices, then ebbing away, it comes from the treetops along the brook. It is an excited sound, a festive, holiday sound. Like the torrents of spring, it is a rushing, liquid sound that here antedates the spring. It is the great chorus of the first of the homecoming flocks of the redwings.

“Bare only yesterday, the treetops along the brook today are clothed with blackbirds. A hundred and fifty or more swirled down to alight among the leafless branches before dawn today. All are males. The females will arrive later. We watch the birds, in the richness of their breeding plumage, flying from tree to tree, each alighting with its scarlet epaulets exposed. Their surging energy is contagious. We feel a sense of elation, a wave of optimism. The stolid endurance of the deepest winter drops away.

“We listen to the overlapping chorus of ‘okaleees’ or ‘bob-y-leees’ swell and fade and begin again. The interplay of sounds merges into a rolling, trilling clamor. Standing listening, we catch little dropped notes spilling through the chorus. The ‘okaleeeing’ is replaced by sharp metallic calls as all the birds take off in a cloud of black to sweep in curves, to turn and turn again, and then swirl down once more to the tops of the brookside trees.

“It is usually near the end of this shortest month of the year or in the earliest days of March that the redwings come back to Trail Wood. The intermingled tumult that comes down from the treetops seems compounded of relief at the end of a long journey, of ecstasy in reaching an age-old breeding ground, of health at a peak, and life lived intensely. We are swept along by the excitement pulsing through these hundred and more bodies. This wild musical clamor of the first of the returning redwings reechoes in our minds long after it is left behind. For the birds, the farflung journeys of migration now are a thing of the past. For us, the winter—all but a few short weeks—has run its course.”

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And yes: While visiting my parents two weeks ago in Columbia, Sue and I heard our first raucous, cacophonous red-winged blackbird chorus of the spring, and we almost jumped for joy!

Is winter over? Of course not. Look at all this frickin’ ice!

But hey—keep your hopes up! The cardinals are singing, and the redwings have appeared.

Fossil Hunting! A New Adventure at the State Capitol

To paraphrase Lily Tomlin: This year, our winter has been perverse—it can get warmer, but it won’t. I’ve been looking for things to do—but as you know, I’m not keen on ice, and there’s still plenty of that around.



So we found something incredibly fun to do! But first, you should know a little about the state capitol.

When I was a kid, and my family was visiting Grandma S (who didn’t have a/c), on some hot summer days my brother and I would walk up to the capitol and enjoy its cool, dark, marble hallways. It was like spelunking! It was like a mini vacation!



I still find the capitol a good getaway. It’s a breathtakingly beautiful building. As a public building, it’s ours, and we can go in there. I like to take walks around its pleasantly landscaped grounds, and look north at the train tracks and the river. I like to go inside and visit the museum. I also like to admire the art.

But last weekend, Sue and I had a new kind of adventure at the state capitol!



The winter 2014 issue of Missouri Resources, the magazine of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, had a neat article in it about the fossils visible in the polished limestone walls and floors of the capitol building.



You need to check this out! The article is “Capitol Fossils,” by Patrick Mulvany. You can see the article online, or (even better, I think), looking ahead to more neat articles, you can also subscribe to the magazine. Subscriptions are free to any Missouri resident (super-cheap for anyone else); you only need to sign up for it, which you can do here.



Why are there fossils in the walls of our state capitol? Well, anyone who took Geology 1 with Prof. Houseknecht at Mizzou should know the answer: it’s because the “marble” isn’t true marble. It’s actually limestone that’s been polished.

Limestone’s a sedimentary rock, which, as we Missourians know, can be chock full of cool fossils. You just walk down a creek bed, picking up rocks, and you can see oodles of fossil echinoderms, mollusks, and other invertebrates. These include crinoids (our official “state fossil”), brachiopods, corals, bryozoans, snails, nautiloids, and more.

These are what’s left of the hard shells and other structural materials of saltwater animals that lived here 335 million years ago, when this area was covered by a sea (in the Mississippian Subperiod, if you want to get technical). Here is what you often find in an Ozark creek bed:









True marble (which isn’t found in Missouri) is a metamorphic rock created when limestone undergoes tremendous pressure and/or heating. Any fossils, impurities, or other interesting inclusions that were in the original limestone lose their shape and are reduced to mere swirly patterns in the marble.

The limestone used to build our capitol is named “Carthage marble” because in the commercial stone trade, this hard, dense, high-quality limestone that can take a decent polish without crumbling is called “marble.” Carthage is the town in southwest Missouri near where this limestone was quarried.

By the way, you can find polished limestone used as architectural marble all over the state. As Prof. Houseknecht pointed out to us, the bathroom stalls in UMC’s Memorial Union south wing are made of polished limestone; he asked us to “go” in there and notice the fossils!

The restrooms at the state capitol are included! You might end up taking extra time in a stall examining the nifty fossils in the partitions! Only ladies are allowed to see this cool nautiloid (or maybe it’s just a snail; but look at the chambers within the coils!):



(Yes, I did! I stood there in a bathroom stall and took a picture!)

Another nautiloid is visible to everyone and is mentioned in the magazine article. This specimen is nearly a foot long! The creature that lived in this conical or cylindrical shell (Gomphoceras sp.?) looked something like a squid, tentacles and all.



So, there are these cool fossils at the capitol that you will miss the first 150,000 times you visit. Naturally, the bigger attractions at the capitol are the majestic architecture of the building itself; the museums; the artwork; maybe even the lawmakers, lobbyists, and other governmental denizens.



But there are copies of a veritable treasure map at the welcome desk. With it, you can hunt all over the capitol for the nifty fossils featured in the magazine article. And, more fun yet, make your own discoveries!



It’s a good idea to bring a flashlight and a hand lens. You’ll look a little funny examining the walls so closely, but really, it’s good for the legislators to see that. It helps remind them that they and their pet bills are not the gravitational nucleus of the universe.



One more thing: I was especially eager to go on this treasure hunt because I wanted to see some examples of a type of bryozoan fossil called Archimedes (the genus is named for the screwlike form that commonly remains of the animal).



I’ve recently educated myself about Missouri’s current, living bryozoan species (read more about Missouri’s living bryozoans here), and now I’m wanting to find all kinds of examples of them—fossilized or living!



(Oh, I’ve got big plans for this summer’s explorations, born out of a long winter’s cabin fever! But more on that later!)

Indian Cabbage and Peas

Mmmmmmm! I’ve found a new Indian recipe that I really like, and I think you’ll like it too. It’s incredibly easy to make with fairly standard American ingredients (there’s one substitution you’ll probably have to make, but it’s an easy one).

I’m not going to write it all out for you, because I want to encourage you to go to the source: Manjula’s Kitchen. Manjula Jain is a wonderful lady from northern India who moved to the United States in the 1960s. On her website, she graciously offers a ton of delicious and healthy recipes, with an easy-to-follow, how-to video for each one.

These videos are filmed, literally, in Manjula’s kitchen. I’m pretty sure it’s her husband or son behind the camera. She’s been making these videos since at least 2007. Her recipes include many traditional favorites as well as creative “fusion” dishes. For instance, she has some really good sandwich ideas.

Additionally, she’s just published a collection of her recipes as an e-book, available on Amazon.com. Pretty nifty, huh?

Her recipes are all completely vegetarian. Also—and this is notable—she doesn’t cook with onions or garlic. Many Indian dishes begin with “chop up an onion . . .” Manjula doesn’t like the way onions and garlic can overwhelm the more subtle flavors of the food. As a culinary alternative—to add the kind of smooth, full flavor cooked onions would add—she uses hing, or asafoetida, pretty often.

Hing is an interesting ingredient. It’s a dried, ground plant resin (sap) that smells awfully bad, and strong, before you cook it. However, it usually goes into the pan right away, as soon as you have heated your oil. And when the hing cooks, its flavor changes dramatically—into something good. And you only need a pinch of the stuff for an entire dish.

So, take your choice: You could chop up an onion, wipe your eyes, and then sauté the onion in oil for a few minutes, or you could just heat your oil and fry 1/8 teaspoon of hing for about 3 seconds. I can totally see the logic in using hing!

I tell you about hing, because it is the one substitution you may need to make with this recipe. If you don’t have any hing around the house (believe me, you’d know it if you have it!)—and you don’t have access to it (it’s available at Indian and international grocery stores), then just substitute a small or medium-sized chopped onion.



So—getting around to the dish!—this is Manjula’s recipe for cabbage and peas, or bund gobi aur mater. This recipe is vegetarian, low-fat, incredibly tasty, and it looks great! It’s all beautiful shades of green!

Tonight we had it as a vegetable dish alongside some rice and some dal (Indian-style lentils).

Here’s the YouTube video for it! It’s one of her older recipes, done when she was a little less comfortable before the camera, and the video edits were a little rough. But even in her earliest videos, the content is clear and well presented.



I hope you’ll check out her website—I love watching her cooking videos, and I think you’ll like them, too. Every recipe I’ve made of hers has turned out beautifully. Her instructions are clear, her foods are delicious and healthy, and, well . . . she just seems so nice.

Thank you Manjula, for so graciously sharing your recipes!

Our Fake Fireplace

No, it doesn’t roar, and neither does it hiss and crack and pop. In fact, it sounds something like an electric fan, and that’s because it’s fake! But we really like it.

We got on this bandwagon last winter, and I think it’s a bandwagon worth getting on. We have a drafty old house, and a space heater for the living room is much better than cranking the thermostat for the whole house.

And the timing for our purchase last winter was just right: Sue had the flu, and I could feel myself starting to come down with it. So, knowing I was running out of time (“it’s now or wait until after we’re both well!”), I went to a nasty big-box store and got our little imported fake fireplace.



Drove it home in the backseat of my little Honda, wrassled it up all the steps to our second floor (where the living room is)—Surprise, Sue! Look what I got for us!

We pulled it out of the box, and . . . Oh, no. It had been damaged. The hole in the box should have been a clue that it might be damaged inside. But I’d been in a hurry. So back in the box it went; I worked it back down our steps, back into my car, and back to the big box store, where the employees helpfully assisted me in opening the box of another one (because all the boxes had tears in them) to check it before I dragged it home.

Got the new one into my Honda, carried it through the front yard to our door, and wrassled it up the steps again—and voilà!



Our fake fireplace is small enough there was no assembly involved—just had to plug it in!

With all that work, all in cold weather, my flu symptoms then came on with a vengeance, and it was compounded with strained back and shoulder muscles from all that wrasslin’ and liftin’!

But somehow, it didn’t seem so bad at that point to have the flu, since I could sit by our fake fireplace and warm my aching bones. It’s amazing how the image of a flickering flame makes a regular ol’ space heater seem not only warmer, but cheerier.

We haven’t had a TV in our living room for some years, now, and our fake fireplace offers a nice alternative—movement, a mild focal point but without the crying or yelling for your attention of a TV.

Anyway . . . it’s been really nice this winter, too, with all the snow and cold weather we’re having.

Now, I need a few more, for a couple of other rooms in the house!

Today, There Are Only Hungry Birds

Boy, we’re having a genuine winter this year, aren’t we. Sue and I just got in from shoveling our six or so inches of snow, which, thankfully, was fluffy stuff and easy to toss away from our sidewalks with my trusty lightweight aluminum coal shovel (which came with the house).

While the sun was out, and while we were getting our workout, it actually didn’t feel that cold. But now that we’re inside with damp hair, and not moving anymore, now that the sun has gone behind a cloud, it’s starting to feel like that zero-degree weather we’re supposed to be having.

A look out our bathroom window, and I noticed more and more starlings perching on the small length of horizontal drain pipe connecting one section of gutter to another, in a place that’s sheltered by the eaves and out of the wind.

At one point, I counted fifteen of them, huddling together.

Now: I’m far from being in love with European starlings—they are exotic, invasive, noxious weeds of the bird world—but when it’s this cold, this bitter, this deadly, things are different. I’m on the side of life.



It reminded me of something my hero Edwin Way Teale wrote in his book A Walk Through the Year (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1978), for his entry for “January 4” (p. 326):

When we put out bird food these winter days we are as impartial as nature. The varied species compete, as they compete in the wild, for seeds scattered on the stone wall under the hickories and along the lane, for suet hanging in mesh bags from the apple tree, for food filling our different feeders. Bluejays share the sunflower seeds with chickadees and evening grosbeaks. Cowbirds feed among the tree sparrows. In these bitter winds of January, there are no “good” or “bad,” “beneficial” or “harmful” birds for us. There are only hungry birds.

Aside from the gray squirrels that we see coming in from the woods, bounding across the glitter of the ice crust, the birds, in their varied shapes and colors, are the most evident form of warm-blooded life today. And they will remain so all during the rest of the weeks of cold. The “dead of winter”—how much more dead it would be each year without the birds!

Birds can survive winter, provided they have enough food to stoke the fires of their metabolism. When there’s snow on the ground, birds can’t find food very easily. If you haven’t done so yet, go get yourself a bird feeder and some seed.

Because today, there are only hungry birds.

Aloo Keema (Plus Matar): Pakistani Meat 'n' Potatoes

Hi, folks! The recent breathtakingly cold temperatures have had me in the kitchen making “cold weather” food like soups and casseroles. It’s partly to satisfy our cravings for nice hot meals, but also to make the house smell excellent!

If you like hearty, spicy foods, you’ll love this. It’s an easy, quick, one-dish meal. If you can make Hamburger Helper, if you can follow directions, this isn’t too much harder.

Before I go further, the following is based on a recipe shared by Mrs. Sahar Khan, owner of SK Kitchen Store here in Jefferson City. You’ll find SK Kitchen Store in the shops next to Schnuck’s on Missouri Boulevard. Sahar, her husband, and her son are usually there, ready to help you pick out quality cookware and find what you need in a cavalcade of fun kitchen gadgets. They also sell Pakistani and Indian foods and cooking ingredients.

Sahar leads occasional cooking classes at her store, and if you’re interested in this sort of thing, I encourage you to call her and get on her contact list. Part of the “mystery” of this cuisine is in the technique, and she shows you: When has the masala cooked enough? How hot should the oil be before you add the spices? Also: Her graciousness is very welcoming, and her enthusiasm is contagious!

This recipe calls for only one special ingredient that probably is not in your spice cabinet—black cardamom pods. Don’t worry! You can buy black cardamom at SK Kitchen Store! If you’re not in Jefferson City, look for it at any good international store with a decent selection of Indian spices. (If you really can’t find it, then I suggest using green cardamom pods, but then, use about four, since they’re smaller and not as powerful. Black cardamom is entirely unique; uncooked, it kinda smells like turpentine. But trust me, you want it in this dish!) This is what black cardamom looks like:



I understand that aloo keema is a favorite dish in Pakistan, a “mom” food. Comfort food. “Aloo” means potato, and “keema” means meat, particularly minced or ground meat, as in beef (or possibly veal, mutton, goat, or lamb—think red meat here). So it’s meat ’n’ potatoes! The “matar” I mention in this post’s title is green peas—an optional addition that I like. Aloo keema matar: Potatoes, meat, and peas.

It’s the spices, of course, that set it apart from drab old American chow. The cinnamon is distinctive, but Sahar told me the key ingredient in her recipe is the black cardamom, and I think she’s right. Looking at other recipes for this dish online, few seem to include it. I encourage you to get some and use it. It imparts an unusual (and perfectly wonderful) flavor!

Again: This is adapted from a recipe from Mrs. Sahar Khan. Thank you Mrs. Khan! (Teach me more and more!)



T. = tablespoon
t. = teaspoon
Adjust all chilis to taste.

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Aloo Keema (+ Matar)
Potatoes, Ground Beef (+ Peas)

1 T. oil
1 medium onion, chopped

2 cinnamon sticks
2 black cardamom pods (I carefully pierce them once with the point of a knife)
2 bay leaves

1½ lb. ground chuck, lean (“ground beef” is just scary)

3 T. fresh ginger, grated
2 T. garlic, minced or pressed

1 t. crushed red chilis
1 t. ground red chilis
2 t. turmeric
3 t. ground coriander seed
3/4 t. salt (or to taste; check at end and add more if necessary)

2¼ cups water, divided (¼ cup + 2 cups)

2-3 medium potatoes, ½ inch dice (about 2½ cups) (I suggest Yukon Gold)
15-oz. can diced tomatoes (I like fire-roasted)
2 t. tomato paste (I’ve found this is optional)

1 cup frozen green peas, thawed (optional)
½ cup fresh cilantro, chopped
2 green chilis, chopped

Step one: Read through recipe and measure and set out all ingredients beforehand. Don’t be daunted by the number of ingredients. This recipe is easy and goes pretty quickly! The extra line spaces in my ingredients list represent things that can be added all together. Organization is good!

In a large, heavy, wide-mouth cooking pan that has a lid, heat the oil, add the onion, and cook on medium-high heat, stirring, until it starts to brown. Add cinnamon sticks, black cardamom pods, and bay leaves, and fry for about a minute. (It will start to smell really good!) Add the meat, stirring to break up the chunks, and cook until the water mostly evaporates. (If at any point it starts sticking, just sprinkle a little water in the pan to loosen it up.)

Add the ginger and garlic; stir and cook a few minutes; then add the spices: crushed red chilis, ground red chilis, turmeric, ground coriander, and salt. Add a ¼ cup of water, now, too. Cook this for about three or four minutes, to meld the flavors and form the “masala.”

Add the potato, tomatoes, and tomato paste, stir to combine, then add 2 more cups of water. Cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the potatoes are just done (don’t overcook potatoes; there’s still about 5-10 minutes of cooking left). (Cooking with the lid on is probably optional, but it makes the potatoes cook faster. But then you have to cook off the extra water; read on.)

When the potatoes are just done, uncover and cook to evaporate the moisture in the pan. You want it to be moist and still rather bubbly, but it shouldn’t be soupy. When it’s no longer watery, stir in the peas, cilantro, and green chilis. Cover again and cook about four minutes, to heat through. Taste and adjust salt.

(If your guests aren’t accustomed to having whole spices in their food, then fish out the cinnamon sticks, black cardamom pods, and bay leaves before serving.) Serve and enjoy!

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Suggested accompaniments are raita and naan.

Raita is a lot like a Greek tzatziki sauce. It complements hot, spicy food with its cool creaminess. You can make some very quickly: plain yogurt plus grated cucumber, pressed garlic or sliced green onion, cumin, and a pinch of salt. Good raita recipes abound. . . . Or you could just use plain Greek yogurt.

Naan is a lot like pita bread, a warm, soft, rather puffy flatbread. (It’s not like that dried-out “pocket” stuff some groceries carry.) Alternatively, you can approximate another traditional flatbread, chapati, by using whole wheat tortillas (heated up, of course).

I like cilantro or mint chutney as a relish, too. And I don’t think anyone would throw a fit if you served this with white rice, either.

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Cooking with fresh ginger: make it easy on yourself; prepare a bunch of it and freeze it ahead in zip bags. Click here for more tips on "convenient Grated Ginger" (Plus a recipe for cantaloupe-ginger sorbet!)