The Monarch Chronicles
An Allegory

"It all seemed too good to be true. Hither and thither through the meadows he rambled busily, along the hedgrows, across the copses, finding everywhere birds building, flowers budding, leaves thrusting–everything happy, and progressive, and occupied. And instead of having an uneasy conscience pricking him and whispering 'whitewash' he somehow could only feel how jolly it was to be the only idle dog among all these busy citizens." –Wind and Willows








The season had become late – she didn't have much time to think about this, not really. That air through which she jigged and jagged did not seem particularly the way she thought it was supposed to be, at least not since the leaves of the very milkweed she intuitively knew to be her delight and living quarters, was brittle to the touch now, large and eaten holes all over the place. Her brief life was not much in the way of planning, but more of an intense sense for doing some-thing, some-thing, all the time, to find that one-thing that would be ultimately soothing.  And oh the energy of these new found wings! If there was a sense of appreciation built into the body and mind of the Monarch butterfly, well, she most certainly had it, and latched for only seconds at a time at this particular milkweed that sat out in front of this particular home all alone, yet as useful as life itself.  As she bounded around the flow of the heat that came off the walls of the great yellow box of the house, there were the variety of smells that she detected and couldn't help herself to wonder why every single thing that she passed as she flitted about the green growth, how was not everything else flitting about in the same joy of aromas? This particular warm yellow box of a house had circled around a wooden wall that, at its very top ends offered what seemed a thousand smells, a thousand little samples. Over the past three sun cycles she had come to feel a sense of claim over this little area of the side river and cavorted around its edges as a sort of protective dance and begin to take pride in the way geranium and petunias sprung upward in their fountains of purple and pink, really little rides of color that had within them their own motion and feeling that nothing likely other than the Monarch could fully
understand, or so she thought. Her pride reached unusual heights at some hours, as the sun blaze hit her wings as if to lay comfort; a slight breeze cooled them back, and she fanned herself easily against the heat.  Food, shelter, warmth, water, what else could there be?

Family Nature Journal
Option 6: Allegory cont'd

"The mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in this throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms....It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said 'Bother!' and 'O blow!' and also 'Hang spring cleaning!' – Kenneth Grahame, Wind in the Willows, "The River Bank"


And so begins one of the great examples of allegory in childrens' literature, Wind in the Willows, where the natural world around us – more typically seen as the passing green landscape, or as the menacing mole who digs those pesky tunnels underneath our daisy beds – comes to life poetically through story. It seems important to briefly point out, when beginning to talk about humans' connections to nature and the function of allegory, that in more advanced analysis of nature studies anyway, there tend to be sometimes valid counterclaims as to why not to anthropomorphize nature. One of them being that it might provide us with a false sense of connection or security to the condition of the animals and other creatures that we are describing. The other, more obviously, is that anthropomorphism is no doubt inaccurate – we really don't know what animals are thinking and can mostly only offer up educated guesses as motives in nature. But so much of outdoor learning has to do with taking into consideration age appropriateness.  In the beginning stages, when the mind is still forming, wonder, innocence, hands-on experience and creativity are high priority functions. If it takes a sense of wonder, born out of the books of allegory, to strike that critical interest in the woods, than I do believe this is another 'green deal' I am certainly willing to make. Parents know through their own experience that as some of that mystery and wonder matures, our analysis will no doubt become more appropriately complex and scientific.

And so to set up the creation of an ongoing story in the mind for young writer, it may take some writing choreography on the part of the parent, some guidance, and some pre-sensing.  The anthropomorphic allegory, of course, tends to take its motives and characteristics from people and placed onto the actions of creatures; the opposite can occur too, where the characteristics of creatures are placed upon the actions of people. Either way, the connection does many things for the sake of outdoor learning: it allows us to ponder for a while the lives of the natural world; it places us inside a sense of wonder and imagination in which the creative impulse -- of mind and matter -- we come to realize is a much more powerful activity than merely receiving pre-created impulses from the likes of screens; it allows us to consider our own humanness – what are our motives, our cares, our humor, our seriousness; and finally, in a wonderful stroke of imaginative connection, it links the creative mind to nature, a bond if you will, which cannot be broken, much in the same way a painting, once completed and framed and set on the wall, is a permanent fixture in the imagination and can be recalled forever. Dreams and the imagination made concrete through art are indeed 'green bonds.' The same holds true for the 'green hour' each day. At 20, the young person will look back and visually see that time.  It will stay with her for the rest of her life.

Option 5: make a goal to write an ongoing, chapter by chapter, allegory in your family journal blog.  As for set-up, we already mentioned handing off a simple book such as Wild Wisconsin, so that there is an easy way for the reader to take a liking to a particular animal, creature, or landscape.  There is no need to make this heavy research -- remember that this must seem free and easy for the young writer. School is school; this is something separate, and hopefully, eventually, much more self-driven and therefore becomes a bundle of suggestions and introductions.  Create a simple two-sided ledger list on a piece of paper and begin to describe what you know about your raccoon, or mole, or seagull, whatever.  Then, over on the other side, consider an interesting characteristic of human beings.  Some small snapshot of people living that could be compelling. The above example describes an easily identifiable self-thought of the mole griping about spring work! If you live in the city, maybe there is the common complaint of griping about morning traffic on the roads. Could this be transferred over to the ducks that cross the street toward the water. Why are there so many ducks that gather here in the morning? What are they trying to get to? Why do some take so long, etc., etc?

Now, to consider imaginatively entering into the 'life' of one of the ducks as protagonist.  What is her background? What are they doing here in the midwest...don't they migrate? Why are these holdovers? Is the river here warm and ice free during the winter time? Has the duck escaped recent injury? What makes this duck courageous, a leader, a follower?  It usually inside these moments of seeing motivation in the creature that we tend to find what it is that we want to say either about the human condition itself or something about ourselves, and the story can go description to expression. If the writer is going through a time that gym class is really getting her down at school, well, then, maybe all this flying around and waddling around the park is similar for our duck.  Writing the nature-based allegory has an endless number of potential connectors.

To begin chapter one, be sure to place a downloaded picture of your chosen creature at the top of the blog post. Find a great quote from a book your admire near the picture, use that as inspiration. Begin writing without worrying how the story will move. Remember, this is a blog, not a published book. It begins as words on screen, but then tends to stay as something only you read anyway, and can be changed at any time.  Write at least two paragraphs describing a scene and your protagonist.  Near the end, see if you can imagine what happens next. Save this next scene for tomorrow. Repeat process.

Family Nature Journal
Option 5: Writing Allegory

"Let's be realistic. Even if we're lucky enough to sing for bears in Alaska or to have bonded with nature when we were young, keeping that bond or establishing an evolved relationship with nature is no easy thing."

–Richard Louv, from "The Hybrid Mind, Enhancing Intelligence through the World Outdoors," The Nature Principle










As parents we want our project of re-naturing kids' lives to feel free and easy. If in the 'old days' kids were asked to just play outside for a while, head into the back yard and get on a swing or dig in the sand, or maybe take a short trip to the nearest creek to skip rocks, well, let's face it, it tends to be a bit more complicated than that today.  For better or for worse, until Louv's call above becomes a reality and nature becomes 'natural' again, parents, caregivers, sitters, guardians and educators have to become part-time choreographers of outdoor education.

In a way, this is truly the key component to the entire project because it stands up to common sense that kids are not always going to simply choose 'the nature option,' just in the same way they may not choose the 'oboe lesson option,' or the 'math homework' option. Our kids tend to become what it is that we present to them. For example I began cooking for myself as a very young boy. I was an only child raised by a single mother. The routine of planning my meals, cooking them, and cleaning up after me wasn't much of a choice.  At one point, I was given a kids' cookbook with great graphics and simple instructions. This was attractive, I remember, because I felt a little bit like a grown up moving through these short recipes and seemed to take some pride in self-guiding the process. But, of course, the situation was set-up: there was the need, and there was the book. The same really holds true for outdoor experience. If there is a committed "green hour" every day at home, then it becomes part of daily life. It begins to become a priority and becomes somewhat untouchable after awhile. Other activities revolve around it. How we set up that "green hour" is important.  Getting kids to write, we all know, takes some work.

In his great book Wild Wisconsin Notebook, James Buchholz gives a wonderful written sketch of Raccoons, Nature's Masked Bandits. "The raccoon's uncanny ability to break into our food storage areas and carry off the bounty is almost legendary in our state park and forest campgrounds...one of the more unusual raccoon raids I've encountered during my years working as a ranger in state parks occurred at Devil's Lake State Park several years ago. The original complaint we received from the camper was that someone broke into his tent and stole his silver money clip and eighty dollars in cash. Upon investigation, I found a large hole chewed through the back of his tent and a long trail of potato chips, hot-dogs, buns, and eggs leading into a nearby forest–a typical raccoon burglary trademark. After a friendly lecture to the camper about keeping his food in his car rather than his tent, I helped him pick up the long line of food and litter. About two hundred feet from the campsite, I noticed a shiny object among the broken eggshells. Yup, there it was, the silver money clip intact with the missing eighty dollars. Apparently, the little masked bandits had finally moved up to petty theft of cash."

This little story happened to remind me of our very own inner-city, at-home raccoon network that seems to have made a den underneath a portion of our backcourt yard cement tiles.  Just last week, making a quick check whether the doors were locked in our car, I walked outside of the courtyard gate and stopped for a moment to the very subtle sound of sniffing in the thin line of bushes near the sidewalk. A I walked to the back of the car, must have been a very friendly raccoon, slunk underneath the car like a slinky shadow then disappeared somewhere over onto the other side. Living across the street from a river and a long line of oaks, I've come to realize that we literally live 'with' raccoons, but that we just don't see them that much.

With a little prompting, a few stories, maybe a Wild Wisconsin Notebook, the story of the raccoon can become one that tells an imaginative story, whether there is any banditing going on or not.

Option 5: Pick an animal to read about, set out chosen reading, and make it part of the "green hour" to read. Pick a series of human like characteristics or tendencies to apply to that animal. See if you can tell a story with a meaningful ending (allegory). On an art postcard, draw the animal on the front side as best as you can. On the backside, write your story.  If it doesn't fit on one, write down to "to be continued," at the bottom and continue during the next "green hour." Send these postcards to a relative.  More on allegory next option.

Riverside Ovens Test Kitchen:
Polenta with Fontina
and Roasted Vegetables

"What can be said about vegetables as a form of gastronomical entertainment is best said simply, since once past the basic behavior, all such recipes depend on you and what you need.
Almost all vegetables are good, although there is some doubt still about parsnips (which I share). [I am no longer doubtful. I know. And rutabaga has joined the exclusive group]."
      – MFK Fisher, from "How to Be Content with Vegetable Love"









There is a recipe for chicken pot pie that I have made now for over a decade – it is a family favorite and, once mastered, has become a repository of creativity in the kitchen. At its base it is a vegetable stew that is then placed inside its doughy shell (several ways to make this as well, but the refrigerated pie crust rolls work just fine in a hurry). The vegetables in this meal have rotated over the years depending on the visual feedback of family members. The time that I tried diced beets didn't bring much of a positive response; the flavor, as we might all agree, brings a very exclusive, earthy fabric that is difficult to match. But we then remember, as are swirling the beets around in the pot, that there is the domination of the red color dye that turns everything that makes contact with the beet a goopy red. The earthy flavors leech onto the innocent carrot. The green bean, already a neutral creature, disappears in to the redness.  No more beets, thank you.  The parsnip, however, is always welcome in moderation to the pot pie. Like the beet, the parsnip is the earth itself, and we sense, when we get that good square bite, that we are plucking it right from the ground and it adds a sort of legitimacy of interest to the chicken pot pie gravy...and it is not red. I have known contentment with the parsnip and rutabega.

The polenta and roasted vegetables dish could use some similar differentiation in pickings.  As we scan the ingredient components on the back of the polenta package, we see virtual zeros right down the line until fiber, of which there is some.  This is part of the allure of polenta: its what you put on top that

counts.  The recipe itself calls for "anything your heart desires," but suggests eggplant, summer squash, red onions, zucchini, bell pepper, then to be topped with parmesan and fontina cheese. In other words, the polenta is there as a comforting stabilizer so have fun with your chosen concoction above.  I decided that besides eggplant, summer squash, zucchini (I considered parsnip, but skipped it in this application), I wanted to cover the porridge with something bright and warm. I remembered a simple recipe for roasted tomato sauce out of Alice Waters' little recipe book called My Pantry, and so placed three and a half pounds of vine tomatoes into a baking dish with olive oil, several small sweet

peppers and some diced basil, let it bake for 45 minutes then placed it all in a blender for chosen texture. This would be my comfort cover over the top of the vegetables, over the top of the polenta, a sort of garden stew.

Polenta takes three minutes to boil. Water is just fine, but I could easily see adding any number of friends to the polenta for richness, like a dash or two of buttermilk towards the end of the congealing stage, a vegetable stock for some of the water, fresh herbs and a pinch of spice. I reused the same

baking pan that I had cooked the tomatoes in for the diced vegetables; a layer of oil, onion and tomato peel remained on the bottom as a base fond and the eventual roasted vegetables carried the tinge of flavor with it to the end.  I found that polenta, if not eaten immediately in its porridge state, will harden and become less inviting. At its initial cooked state, though, it can be swirled and mixed with sauce in a similar way that mashed potatoes can with gravy. Here, the acid of the tomato sauce and saltiness of the parmesan was nicely tamed by the natural neutral flavors of eggplant and summer squash, and combined nicely with the very neutral flavor of the polenta.  Comfort food at its best.  Warm, rich, layered texture, easy digestion, a 'meatless monday' option without even thinking about it.

Riverside Ovens Test Kitchen
Restaurant of the Year

"It is a Sunday evening in mid-June. the cafes of Cavaillon are crammed. There isn't an inch to park your car. The noise is tremendous. In the most possible of the hotels – it goes by the name of Toppin – all the rooms are taken by seven o'clock. But the little Auburge La Provencale in the rue Chabran is quite quiet and you can enjoy a good little dinner..." Elizabeth David, "The Markets of France: Cavaillon."





It is Sunday and what we found out by the menu, still brunch time as we seated outside in a gated sidewalk terrace along Church Street.  This little square area of downtown Evanston is quite hectic, parking also crowded, as it was in Cavaillon for David, and so the better to be on foot we have found in this area of town to pick and choose from what has begun to feel like twenty dining destinations all worth the while if for no better reason than to see the future of fine dining right here in the upper midwest.  That is precisely what you get at Farmhouse, a two-story masterpiece of food, decor, concept and service that stands out as a sort of culmination of all things trendy in the farm to table

revolution, including a tasteful nod to downplaying its very own self importance. In the end, a restauranteur wants a foodie to leave their place with a gravitational pull left in the back of the mind to return, for the food, for the space, for the service, not for the sake of fashion. Farmhouse achieves all of the undertones of successful fashion because underneath it all is a concept that makes sense: source all of your fresh food from a single farm and use them to create recipes that don't leap away from midwest fare but re-engage it, with an understated elegance.  For all of us who have thought of this very idea in restaurants previously – what happens if we take simple midwest cooking and turn it gourmet – well, we have finally found it and the executive chef, from small town Ohio, likely doesn't have to work hard at producing meals in this category. It is part of his upbringing.

A wonderful example was the brunch menu full of new takes on fairly popular midwest cuisine. I ordered the biscuits and gravy, with the hitch that the gravy be made from homemade, locally sourced short ribs, the dish covered by nearly poached local eggs, making a heaping portion of one of the

more savory, rich breakfast plates that I have ever had. A brief glance at the finished plate and one wouldn't necessarily hold it out as anything of a masterpiece, but once you get started you begin to taste the care of the biscuits themselves, the delicate cooking technique that leaves them still moist, flaky, and able to pull inside the white gravy above.  The dripping of the egg yolks over it all is almost too much and you are fairly convinced that you are eating dessert before the meal, but then look around the other tables at other plates and see that they are sharing the same experience.

On this visit the gravitational pull to return to the Farmhouse last somewhere around five hours.  A mere half a mile away from my hotel, the question becomes why not return here for a late dinner, check out the rotated menu and see how the farm looks by dim candles next to small vases full of pressed wildflowers?  The beer selection was the interesting beginning by two taps from the B Nektar Meadery, which produces wonderful honey based fermented and filtered ales, really a perfect sort of beverage to go along with the farmhouse concept. I ordered the duck confit, a dish of old world grains, Whiskey cherries, frisee, spicy duck and spicy backwoods mustard.  As so many of us duck lovers have come to find out over the years, duck is a very difficult and fickle piece of wild meat to cook well.  More than likely any technique of fast cooking is going to leave the duck dry, dense and, frankly (and unfortunately) wasted.  One of the reasons that I have skipped ordering duck at a variety

of past restaurants is that I just hate to see this beautiful wild bird wasted by a cooking process that doesn't work.  The confit process is by its very nature a purposefully patient technique, brining as early as a day before and then slow cooking.  By doing this, and by adding the right fats and juices (cherries here), the cook is likely able to manage the texture moment by moment, which is proper care, unlike with, say, a chicken thigh that can be handled quickly and can recuperate from a poor start on the frying pan.  The end dish was a real work of craftsmanship, where flavor and texture synchronize – the skin is crisp and seasoned, the meat flakes and is still moist. The surrounding flavors complement and add don't detract.  This, alongside a bee mead, was the best farm meal that I have ever had.  The success of the meal is experienced in circles of ambiance, from the nature of the dish and decor of the table, to the side rooms made by brand and classic farm art, to the open seating concept that allows farm goers to socialize.  Although all the outer details are well cared for, it is still the small hot plate of confit that will bring you back.

Last year's Restaurant of the Year Award went to the Driftless Glen out of Baraboo.  There, as at the Farmhouse, there is a thoughtfulness in dining creation that seems to transcend out of current fashion and to create the very epitome of it, as though examples of the ideal at all levels.  It will be very interesting to see next year's winner.

Family Nature Journal:
Option 4, the Family Nature Blog

"Standing there one day, I was transported into another world. I  watched native trout and underwater viewing window. Above and below were muskrats and local birds, and I was told that deer and even an occasional elk wander into the viewing area. I was struck by a thought and question: first this room and its living view beats TV; and second, what if a neighborhood were structured around a rehabilitated wildlife habitat?"
        – Richard Louv, from "Creating Every day Eden, Backyard Revolution"




As we begin a more explicit attempt at re-naturing our lives by finding good daily practices and imagining our homes as nature centers, one thing becomes very obviously clear: there are a few common tensions that compete for our time in these projects.  Some of these tensions are bound to be exclusive to each family's life style, work schedule, extracurriculars, social, etc; but one that we will all likely have in common is the great balancing act between "screen time and green time."  A very eye-opening article from 2010 NYT was titled, "If your kids are awake, they are probably online." The article went on to make a point that for many of us, especially kids, usually some form of digital media is turned on and being absorbed throughout the day, as a kind of built-in companion, if you will. It may be music, it may be the phone, internet, TV, but taken as a whole it surrounds us and becomes nearly visible, a similar role, one can imagine, that nature used to play in our lives. The true trick then in a modern environment is first to recognize this media surrounding, and then begin the journey of re-naturing some of that time, for the sake of balance and well-being.  Louv and others involved in human restoration have spent a lot of time trying to provide us with as many examples and tools for doing this as they can find.  Certainly creating one's own home and yard as a newfound source of 'nature time' is a great start.  But to keep the project alive, and to keep it engaging and realistic in terms of interest, we need specific practices and modes of creation.

I have found that placing my various interests in nature, food and travel into a blog is a great way to keep these projects low pressure, low profile, but also accountable.  The nature blog is a few things at once: first, ideally, the blog post is in reaction to some time spent outside, doing something, observing something, thinking, researching, running around outside, or whatever.  Whatever style the blog post takes hardly matters – some nature writers thrive in relating nothing more than descriptive journal entries, others scientific observations, others outdoor adventures written in narrative form, even poetry. To keep a blog alive and restorative, so to speak, it needs to release from other standards of perfection or deadline. Blog posts are thoughts in action, they are hopefully loose, and don't necessarily need to be edited. In other words, they can be fun and kids will like them.

The second obvious point to make about the potential family nature blog is that they are indeed screen time and visually oriented, but a 'nature deal' I am willing to make. The set up for the blog entry is natural discovery. The blog format also allows for personally taken photographs of nature or even self-created art!  Use a quote from a nature writer for inspiration...the blog post might include reading!  All of this creates a pleasing sense of not only accomplishment, but it is a permanent testimony to experience and can be archived to view for yourselves, but it also, by its very definition of being a blog, is a sharable contribution.  For grandma to be able to watch the family 'nature journey' from afar is bound to be special for all participants.  If the blog 'practice' gained momentum and stuck as a ritual, is it possible that kids could share among themselves their own nature blogs? In the realm and scheme of things, I have to say I would be far more tickled by the prospect of a nature blog friendship than a Facebook friendship.  One is educational, fun, experiential, and moving toward the direction of a wholistic goal; the other a short, clipped advertisement for self that includes virtually no substance.  One seems permanent, alive and restorative; the other passing, artificial, and ultimately energy depleting.


Option 4: Create your own family blog site.  Blogger or Word Press offers very simple free blog services that work seamlessly well.  The process might take 20 minutes, maybe an hour if the design of the page is really important. Experiment with a beginning posting structure that can be used over and over again to start, then let your own form take shape over time.  I like to bring in a personal photo of nature, then write a quote of inspiration from a nature writer next to the picture.  Then I begin my own writing, whatever the topic might be. The easiest writing to start with is the simple descriptive journal entry. "This afternoon, we (I) decided to walk around the block only looking at the front yard gardens. This time of year we saw mostly ________. The sky above was __________ I remember one day thinking what it would be like to live near water....the last Monarch of the season flitted past. Monarchs are amazing look like stained glass in flight. Without looking as much at the houses and more at just the nature, I began to realize we lived inside a forest....."

Any of these impressions can lead to not only more writing (patience in writing literally takes time and practice!) but to quick research projects, art, knowledge.  When we quickly evaluate this entire process, all for the sake of colorful, artful, thoughtful, blog page, in comparison to virtually any form of media consumption, they don't even compare.  Over time, we actually begin to intuitively come to grips with this difference and will become more attractive to the restorative process of creating, than the depleting process of absorbing. At the end of the first blog post, plan for the next one. This is thinking like a writer and researcher – what do I create next? Parents may need to set out a sticky note reminder for that day's 'outdoor adventure' and blog entry. Remember that it can be edited at any time after publication if desired.

Wingra Views

"...but the
    reaper cannot
       separate them out there they

are in the story of his life
    bright random useless
       year after year..."
         
   – Mary Oliver, from "Morning Glories"




Even the Buckthorn berry,
   considered a menace along the shore trail
       perfect little beads

little globules of the perfect red
    whose curved sides
         bob but little, stationary

reflects the slivers of sunshine
    making it through the lush
       leaf of cottonwoods

and hold their space as if defiance.
   That is the way of all that is living.
       That choiceless perfection as is.

Below, as if in unison, autumn leaves
    create for the eye –
        lens of the earth –

a pattern of color
    and fiber and nutrient
        that does not think but will

eventually reach the lake
    from underneath along rootlines
         where my footmarks will never reach
       

"Sunlight like honey this morning,
and a stiff wind spreading it smoothly
over the bluestem." – Ted Kooser, from Winter Morning Walks










september 21


Slight breeze and cool early morning.


The bay at Black River mostly flat as glass
but for one long arm of deep ripples
that curves across the surface
from point to point at the entrance
like an arm claiming poker chips.
When I open the sliding door I notice
the chortle of songbirds has left
as if a transaction had taken place
late last night under the cover of moonlight.
The airwaves of the auditorium have been given
to the slight flapping of the aspen leaves.
A bald eagle watches over the bay
from an oak limb as if guarding
the rising cricket hum.

Family Nature Journal
Option 3

"By September, the day breaks with little help from birds. A song sparrow may give a single half-hearted song, a woodcock may twitter overhead en route to his daytime thicket, a barred owl may terminate the night's argument with one last wavering call, but few other birds have anything to say or sing about.
It is some, but not all, of these misty autumn daybreaks that one may hear the chorus of the quail."  – Aldo Leopold, from "The Choral Copse"








For those interested in the outdoor learning movement, so much energy obviously needs to be placed in continuing to provide positive engagement, slow time, and activities built around a hopefully newfound daily connection with nature.  But it is also important sometimes to take a wide lens look at that list of things that seem to prevent us from turning our own homes to nature centers.  Some obvious preventers are simply time and energy, a busy schedule and sometimes nothing more than a lack of interest.  Another that comes up, especially as we begin to create our own curriculums, is that there is always a question whether we are really enough of naturalists ourselves? Are we experts or just novices? And if just novices, are we really qualified to begin this project of prioritizing "green time over screen time?" The answer is absolutely, without a doubt, yes.  To start with a very simple human argument, we all are born with the right to a connection with nature, whatever that comes to look like.  As mentioned in first Family Journal post, this project is going to take as many shapes as there are families. Some families are musical, others athletic, some in business, some in non-profit. There are entry points to outdoor

learning for every avenue of interest imaginable. Any trained naturalist will hopefully tell you that even though they have expertise in a particular field or two, or that they might have a strong and broad knowledge of the outdoors, the truth is, there is no way to be an expert in all things natural. And that this information and training is not exclusive to anyone.  If we were commissioned to write scholarly articles, or create lab documents then, yes, we need expertise. What we are going for instead is something far more accessible and familial: time spent outside, seeing natural images instead of artificial, and re-learning about a world outside of our making, one that we are significantly a part of.  In a way, the  outdoor learning movement will come to mean learning about oneself more wholly, more balanced, as a result of getting to know reality again, the river, the park, the bird, the bat, the sound of the wind, the unusual flying pattern of the Monarch. Those things are not something separate from us and only known by an expert. In fact, they are you and you are them. This understanding needs practices and time.

Family Journal Option 3: Become your own expert.  Writing is a powerful tool for understanding things. We have thoughts we carry around, but they are often fleeting and hard to grasp, much like the butterfly mentioned above. Writing is a sort of test of what you really think.  Very short pieces of writing, one sentence, a tweet, etc., only capture the kind of short thoughts we carry around with us that are fleeting and untested.  If we only stick with the short responses, unfortunately we can never really come to know what we think. To write a page about something can seem an insurmountable task sometimes, especially if we haven't done it. But the rules are that everyone can write, everyone can think, and everyone has a right to a connection with nature. These are all permission slips to becoming an expert on something natural.

Take a 20 minute walk around the block, to the park, to the close hiking trail, and take either mental notes or written notes on three things that seem to stand out in nature. What are your impressions? What do you already know about this tree, this bird, this blade of grass, this prairie flower? If you don't know, guess for now. You can research later.  Sit inside and write one page, as an expert, about one of these three subjects. Use Leopold's line, "By September, the day breaks with little help from birds. A song sparrow may give a single half-hearted song, a woodcock may twitter overhead en route to his daytime thicket," as inspiration, placing yourself within your month, your day, and any natural pattern you can think of.  Don't stop to think too much -- there is no expert watching. Try this everyday for a week.

Family Nature Journal
Option 2

"Yet, nature does not have to remain 'out there.' It is right here, beyond the window, just waiting to be noticed. The squirrel scrambling along the phone wire; gulls circling high overhead; silhouettes of trees; cloud formations; the chance butterfly on your porch geranium..." – Clare Walker Leslie, Drawn to Nature










Your home is your nature center.  This might take some getting used to and an imaginative leap or two, but it seems important to not have to wait for 'some other time' to get outside.  If there is one small problem with the outdoor learning movement as it is found in institutions, it might be that it has worked to overcompensate the lack of outdoor exposure by turning outdoor experience into something overly rigorous and task oriented, a school lesson with a list of outcomes. As outdoor learning becomes more comfortable with itself at all levels, and as administrative oversight begins to see that sometimes nothing is something, it seems it will be natural to see that mere unregulated "green time is better than screen time," and that simple time spent in observation, recognition, imagination, and wonder will fill in many of the missing spots in childrens' (and parents!) lives. But the scene does need to be set. If we transfer over to our own homes some of the things we tend to see and experience at nature centers and outdoor gardens, we can begin to see that every day at home is a potential nature center experience. When we go to the nature center around our cities there are a few things that we are introduced to immediately: usually the natural beauty of the surroundings; we are introduced to the history of the 'place;' and then we might be led on a tour around a forest or garden, asked to see certain things and take note of them. Activities might follow.  Much of this can be duplicated on our city or rural streets, it just takes a new vision to make the opportunity ever-present.

For example, at the UW Arboretum, we immediately are introduced to its long history and its pioneers of prairie, forest and marsh restoration. We learn that the land in this area had been prairie oak savannah pre-settlement, then turned to farmlands, which created disruption, which transformed the landscape. The idea behind restoration is to try to reintroduce native species and pull back non native species, so that there is a harmony again between land, growth and its care.  Take a little bit of time read about the history of your city and neighborhood.  There are always stories about founders,

development and allotted green spaces. Begin to think of and talk about your own home as part of this fabric that had been created on top of a previous landscape.  As you walk around the neighborhood, not only point out as many plants as possible, but think of lawns and gardens as restorations.  Call them that if it helps.  Along the edges of Lake Monona there are many patches of milkweed. Why is it a good idea to make sure all the milkweed doesn't get mowed? They are the sole source of Monarch butterfly habitat. Where you see milkweed, you may see an egg, an instar, eventually a full butterfly.  Once the story is revealed, the imagination begins to see that the city street is not about concrete first and nature just grows in around the edges, but the other way around: it is the lake, woods and parks first; houses came afterwards, beautiful, but also a change in the landscape, and we can become land restorationists ourselves, every day. The squirrel now has new meaning. The shade trees are native habitat. Where you learn these things is your own nature center, your home.

Family Nature Journal Option 2: Briefly talk about what your neighborhood began as. For many, it was Native American first, then settlement, then city, and hopefully a city plan that included parks and green spaces. Who are the parks named after?  Outside, take a water color postcard and draw on its front a sign of a park and write journal notes pointing out the nature around it, any observations that are happening around it, birds, squirrels, shadows, sky, etc.  Flip the card over and write about "why my house is a nature center. If I was in charge of taking care of the park, I would..."

Family Nature Journal:
A Curriculum

"You may say you have no nature around you where you live. Or perhaps you don't have time to go looking for nature. Or maybe you aren't sure where to begin. I think one easy and fun way to start, no matter where you live, is to simply observe the sky above. It is always there." – Clare Walker Leslie, from Drawn to Nature






After attending a very enlightening information session put on by Sustain Dane's Outdoor Learning Network, one thing that became clear, as it has in the past, is that people need to connect with nature. But how we do that is bound to be as varying and dynamic as people themselves, which is to say infinitely. In a way then we are all potential curriculum builders for our own nature projects, our hikes, our gardening, our hunting and fishing, our learning, our art and our wonder.  The Family Nature Journal: A Curriculum, is meant to be a project in motion, a set of thoughts and observations that might have just as much a tendency to look backwards as forwards, and, if fortunate, always looking right now directly up into the sky, for that would mean that today has been a good day, somewhere, somehow, outside.

We are finally now in the full-on evidence stage of realizing that people, no doubt kids especially, need nature connection.  There is no need to try to go through the entirety of all that in this blog slot – in a way, it is complete common sense once we give ourselves even a moment to think about it – but it is important it seems to realize that in order for that connection to happen, it might not necessarily happen for free, but in many cases needs to be sought out intentionally, even earned.  We practice many things to become good at: reading, writing, arithmetic, music, sports, video games.  It shouldn't  surprise us at all that a connection to nature has similarities. To purposefully prompt children to get outside and take a walk or check out the ducks at the park, well, it takes some prompting and it takes sometimes some good but firm arguments for those days when the response is "no way." To consider the simple measure of a rule that goes something like this, "one hour of screen equals one hour outside," can only work if the second half of the equation has follow through day in and day out. It's very possible, hopefully likely, that once this system becomes part of daily life, the child will in fact begin to seek out that hour on their own. I have seen it happen with my own eyes.

The family nature journal will need an initial prompting, a commitment. A simple daily check off sheet could be a start, art projects, writing projects, or even a family centered blog.  If none of this practical concrete 'achievement' is necessary, that is great in a way, because it means all it takes is some verbal prompting and that is that. But for other learners and 'experiencers,' something created and concrete might be just the thing.  A great and simple start is right where Clare Walker Leslie

begins her wonderful book of journaling where she takes down the the note, "I began noticing the sky when out in Minnesota teaching students to observe local land. We were on our backs watching billowing rolls of clouds filling the entire sky. No one knew what they were. Later, we were informed they were mammatus clouds – clouds of high disturbance."

"Clouds of high disturbance" is a writing instructor's dream and one that could easily become a stop-off point for a poem or any other kind of written observation. The drawing here is simple and engaging (never as easy as it looks when it comes from a great artist). Free and easy is the key to begin.  I recently had the opportunity to take a nature art journaling course at the UW Arboretum and was very quickly reminded that my ambition simply didn't match up to my ability and I had to scale back my attempts at drawing nature from intricate and accurate to light and whimsical. In twenty minutes I could create a postcard size drawing from nature and was very satisfied with the low pressure process of pencil or watercolors. The key is, the real point of entry, is that the 20 minute drawing is time spent not only outside, but time of connection that easily rivals (and we hope surpasses) anything experienced on screen or indoors. Replacing artificial images with natural images is really an enormous part of the outdoor learning movement.

Curriculum option 1: buy some water color postcards at the art store, along with whatever art tools necessary, and draw a 20 minute picture from nature on the front. On the back, write a journal entry. If an interesting phrase pops up, write a poem of any length along the side or at the bottom. Hand it to a parent or send it to a relative.

"...In the woods
A north wind plays. Chaotic crickets
Call from an ancient moat. Lingering
Sunlight illuminates
A desolate terrance."
       – Huai Ku, "Living on the Plain in Early Autumn"








Don't have far to go.
The courtyard is aflame by noon sunlight.
The King Tut Grass arches
over the terra cotta art.

As I sit in silence at rectangle of sunlight
I want to hear only two things:
the cicadas chanting in the trees
that overlook the Yahara
and the crow call
that roves the streets like wind itself.

You said you wished the world
would be quiet.
I wonder if we stopped the spinning wheels
if the cicada song
would reign.

Riverside Ovens
Sustainable Test Kitchen:
Thai Grilled Chicken

"At the most basic level, we cook to provide nourishment. But that's only the very beginning. We also cook to express our love, our desire to care for others. Some of us cook as an outlet for creative instincts, to fashion out of a set of ingredients something new that is much more than the sum of its parts. Or we may cook to explore different cultures, to better understand the way others experience the world. Many of us cook for solace...." – editors, Cooks Illustrated









For the intentional cook, there are many reasons, motives and moods associated with the cooking experience. The last post was interested in doing some testing of the process of the insta-pot, a relatively new fashion in cooking culture that seems to get support from the home cook and chef alike. With the insta-pot, there are possibilities to solve the recurring problems of time efficiency along with preserving nourishment – you can use good fresh ingredients and keep the good stuff locked in the pot. Time is of the essence.  But even though time saved is a very practical motive for serving a regular dinner, so the notion of slow cooking slow food is another experience altogether and one that allows the cook other entry points into the testing of why we cook and what we cook.  This past weekend I wanted to try the Thai Grilled Chicken recipe out of Cook's Illustrated.  I have been grilling game hens from the basis of the same recipe for twenty years.  I have always enjoyed the prescribed (at least) 45 minute grilling time for these small birds that offer, as Cooks tells us, "a high ratio of flavorful skin to meat." My old recipe called for little more than a skin lather of melted butter, dijon mustard and some chipped rosemary and then essentially let the hens sit over a heat level that

doesn't burn the skin. This slow method not only works its way up, but obviously, because in a covered grill, works its way all the way around the hen and creates a good baking method. There are few more powerful repositories of flavor than the game hen, with its small components moist and carrying any sauce you choose very well over the time duration.  To add one more enjoyment to the process, I had the fortune of being able to cook this time at a small cabin where the grill is located on a deck overlooking a small pine forest which looks down onto a lake.  Sometimes it's a good idea, as the editors above relate, to take a step back from the usual mechanics of the daily cooking routine, and realize that there are all kinds of reasons to enter into the cooking process.  To grill for others a meal with a new recipe in the safe confines of a forest is getting awfully close to the cooking utopia, and one I assume many cooks and chefs alike have considered over the years: 'how could we offer our eaters the experience of the outdoors and good food together?'  We could assume that this process probably tugs to certain strands in the DNA that go far far back; it certainly would not have had to been meat over the fire, but a vegetarian option also sat there in our communal dna right alongside.  To see the trail of coal-fired smoke rise up from the four smoke holes on top of the grill along the limbs of the pines is something that the ancients might very well have taken for granted, but for us, in the middle of busy lives, and offered likely far too many non self-created eating options, its seems a good idea to cherish the time as it moves along as slowly as the summer breeze that circles along the surface of the lake.

I felt like there was no real need to follow the recipe in its entirety in this case.  It is a beautiful recipe and is motivated by what is called "gai yang, it's street food that originated in Thailand's northeastern Iran region but has become ubiquitous throughout the country." The hens in this native case are butterflied and marinated in a cilantro, garlic fish sauce concoction, then served with sweet spicy dipping sauce and sticky rice.  As I was going through the grocery store considering the thirteen ingredients, I considered ahead that I might, at time of cooking, be far more interested in the smell of the grill and the passing of time and the pine limbs than the scrubbing of dishes, so found a nice jar of Thai cooking paste in the Thai section of the store and decided that would be my lather.  No need to butterfly this time, although the pictures of the bamboo rods through the hen halves slow cooking at an elevated distance above the heat looked very alluring to say the least.  I lathered the skin and set them on the grate and listened to the crackle as the slow cooking process did its work under the green hood of the grill.  By the end, the hen disassembled with ease; extra Thai paste was available for dipping. It is a sort of finger maintenance food to be sure. What we gave up, however, in the pre-cooking stages, we gained as deck time breathing in deeply the lake air.

Riverside Ovens
Sustainable Test Kitchen

"A confession: I already own a stovetop pressure cooker, the conventional kind that you would heat over a burner and then regulate yourself. It is currently supporting a colony of dust bunnies in the back of my highest cabinet, behind the panini press. I never got over my fear of exploding split-pea soup to use it with any regularity."
   – Melissa Clark, from NYT Food







There is a lot to consider when thinking over how to apply ideas of sustainability to good food and cooking practices.  The questions might range from philosophical to carbon foot print, from slow process to mindful eating, from local to organic. The modern consumer invested in social innovation and sustainability is, first and foremost, a thoughtful and planning consumer. But how to do this when the hours in a day are rolling by; the intentions for cooking a dynamic meal are there, but then there is the recipe to read, the grocery to visit, the peeling and prep, the dishes to retrieve (and later clean), and finally the execution of the cooking itself.  If we could all run our own restaurant at home for ourselves, that would allow for our days to become like the imagined ones of the great New York chefs who wake in the morning to beat the rush at the docks for fresh seafood, then off to the local farmer's market, maybe pull a few herbs from the rooftop herberium to boot.  In short, the home dining experience has become more complicated than ever. To quickly cook two, three, four ingredient meals gets results quick, but the ingredients more than likely will be processed; to cook long, doing your best to stay mindful, to breath through it, care for the food, and serve a nutritious meal might mean giving up your day job.  

We recently took an instapot cooking class at the local Sur La Table and might have found a tentatively working answer to some of these question. Not that the pressure cooking concept is new, but it is in trend right now and so as good a time as any to test for oneself what the popularity is all about.  For me, sustainability in cooking should have a few criteria built into it: is the food more natural than processed, is from local sources or organic sources if possible, 

and does it ultimately promote the intentional process of slow cooking?  There are many others to consider, but these are a good start.  For our class we prepared a pressure cooked cheese cake, mushroom risotto and beef spareribs, all within about an hour and forty-five minute range. This included the prep of the ingredients and the making of a side salad, not pressurized. 

The cheesecake was more than efficient, easy to make and it did come out with fully gelled and moist texture throughout.  Because the cooking time for the cake was something like 15 minutes, though, the ingredients did come out with the same silky denseness as most cheesecakes we might come to know.  It had formed something like the texture of a custard with rice beads. The graham cracker crust and the caramel salt topping gave the cake the extra flavor that it needed.

If the cheesecake showed some weaknesses, the mushroom risotto was the true standout from the instapot.  We started with some usual preparation on the stovetop, including some vinegars and wines, but quickly began to use the sautéed function of the instapot, which worked well 

within a very short period of time, eventually coming to dump the arborio rice packets, the mushroom, and the liquids into the cooker for something like 30 minutes.  As the instructor promised, if there was one comfort food meal that she uses the instapot for at least once a week, it is for a variety of risotto dishes. The pressure concept worked well to congeal all of the ingredients, self-season as it formed and reduced on its own, and came out with the kind of perfectly clumped softness to remind you of nothing better in restaurants.

Now, about the meat? It is mentioned in instapot writing that the pressure process is making paleo diet seekers very happy.  From our experience in the class, I would have to agree. We applied some browning heat, some flour, and some seasoning to the beef short ribs before we placed them into the instapot along with a red wine and onions mixture.  These were large chunks of bone-in meat.  Normally when a cook sees this, they would certainly brown and flour, but it would be a perfect application for the slow cooker, maybe leaving in the mass of pieces for a five or eight hour process depending low or high.  Our ribs came out of the cooker after 30 minutes.  As we tonged them out, the bones slid off of the meat (important to consider attitudes of red meat and sustainability at this point...where did they come from? Grass fed?, etc.) and a texture had formed by the reduction and the floured surface. As our instructor said out loud, "you'll have a hard time finding better than we are about to be served." She was right. It is possibly true that the slow cooker process might allow for the meat to absorb more of its surrounding ingredients, including, say, carrots, onions and celery, but it also seems important to think that sometimes slow cooked ribs lose their own character through the elongated process, where in the instapot, the ribs kept their distinct texture and flavor, while carrying, at least on the surface, some of its other ingredients.

If this prep had happened at home, without the extra time of instruction and collaboration, it is more than a little possible that all of this could have been done, with two pots, within an hour time.  Some of the stovetop prep could have been handled in the pot itself, as it does have a sautéed function.  By the end, if the process were streamlined, far fewer dishes would have been used, and very few of the native nutrients would have been lost: unlike boiling, any vegetable that cooks in the instapot can circulate back onto itself.  Cooking sustainably does seem to have some tension between efficiency and slowness.  It felt like there was a kind of middle ground being established in the instapot process. Energy consumption and water consumption way down. Flavor and texture way up. It is still impossible to beat the long and slow forming of a slow cooker aroma in the kitchen, but all things considered, it now has a real competitor on the counter.

Prairie Views:
Showy Sunflower

                                "...they
are everywhere in the diligent
   cornfield rising and swaying
       in their reliable
finery..."  
      – Mary Oliver, "Morning Glories"






Even by the thick morning fog
   bent as if laboring at an angle
      of their long-leaved hips
           they show themselves

by early autumn the highest
    players among the prairie bluestem,
         the long exited compass plant,
              the twining cow parnsip.

They bloom late as the famous
    do when they wait for the crowd
       to settle into their easy seats
           then lift up their faces

like flower heads, all made up
    by the glitter of sunlight
         in love with the quiet music
            of themselves.

Cattail Journal 

"in a silky agitation,
    went leaping
        down into the shadows
             of the bog..."

– Mary Oliver, "The Pinewoods"






afternoon along the drive
    has lost its light
        by the arches of the tamarack
              that line the marsh

just as soon be a critter
   of the forest entering
        by four small legs and feet
             the wooden bridge

quiet, side to side, to peek
   at the footing of the black
      peat that looks like tar
          and carries closer to the shore

the great forests themselves
   of cattails and rushes;
       this time there is no need
            to stop

and stand against the wood
   rails of the lookout
      but must slink in among
           the stiff new stalks

yet unseen by the eyes of we two legs.
   where there is that moment
      that the dream of where the dirt
          goes to water

and off onto the silky stillness
  of the pond is nothing,
      fatefully, underneath
          or above
       

Praire Views

"All I am saying is that there is also drama in every bush, if you can see it. When enough men know this, we need fear no indifference to the welfare of bushes, or birds, or soil, or trees.  We shall then have no need of the word 'conservation' for we shall have the thing itself. The landscape of any farm is the owner's portrait of himself." – Leopold, "The Farmer as Conservationist"









It is early morning, the sun has begun to warm the very tips of the big bluestem at Curtis Prairie, but they are still heavy by night dew and lean in over the narrow trail as if at either side slowly straightening back to their assigned daily positions after a night of long whispering.  To run through this bluestem archway could be done in a couple of ways.  If I bent down on my haunches, I might just slip through unblemished or I might dash through and take the mildly sharp slap of the wet racemes across the cheeks. I raise both of my arms up and find that my forearms are capable guards against any light injury.  Back in among the big blue are bright yellow clouds of the goldenrod, still, like a fixture, and what defines the field palette at this moment.  I realize that the prairie is made for many speeds, and that we could all be thankful, for not everybody is going to willingly dash through. The prairie is a maze made for walking, searching for milkweed and the monarch; it is made for the examiner's careful review, as she might lift up the milkweed leaf seeking to determine the difference between the fledgling instar egg and the aphid. Even the motorist, buzzing by at 65, might awe and wonder whether there is a more peaceful slice of time out there than the belt line.  That there is "drama in every bush," I see, isn't necessarily the story line. The story has more to do with setting foot on the farm or prairie in the first place.  Take the turn into Olbrich Gardens parking lot tomorrow, take twenty minutes to walk through the treasure hunt of foliage and serpentine secrecy of the hidden chairs or benches, and by the next week that twenty might turn to forty, the next, an hour, and so on. The prairies are near extinct not for any more reason than the mind's inability to give oneself self-permission set inside earth time and participate in the drama of every bush.  The farmer might be one of the last few remaining who stand inside earth time, looking out, no doubt, to the rush of the rest of the machinery of the world and wondering himself, in reverse logic, I wonder what that is like?  The answer might not be one or the other by itself. The city man must here and there take a jog through the bluestem. The farmer might miss his remnant prairie that much more as he passes by from a distance, hand tight on steering wheel, watching for merging traffic, and wondering what he might do without.  

Cattail Journal

"In Wisconsin 'man bites dog' is stale news compared with 'farmer plants tamarack." – Leopold, from "Natural History"








9-11

The long and winding isthmus that is Arboretum Drive, from Vilas to the Nature Center, is as easy a way to enter into natural history as there is in the city.  The Wisconsin mind collectively knows the cattail marsh and its thousands of living symbols that can take over a bog at any disturbance. Leopold wanted more tamarack in through these edges for the sake of enhancing a wild game habitat, including, of course, birds of any feather that might like to sail across the natural blinds of six foot tall cattails.  We park at one of the very small and remaining lots across from an access point to Gardener Marsh then walk across the narrow two-board walk that offers up two decks, both inside the cattail explosion, if you will.  Red-wings are known to lay claim to a particular acreage of these watchtowers, built by a sinewy and durable fiber that can withstand the poundage of the bird and also any wind that our northern state can muster.  Native Americans used the rhizomes to eat and turned the stalks to papooses, or to bolster moccasins. Ancients used to pound out the cattail for the starch to heat and use as rudimentary flat bread.  If you needed a medium for paper, here also was a promising source.  The tamarack at the edge of the bog in unison with the cattail work to create sphagnum moss or what is here called peat. The boardwalk serves a clean means to walk through a waterlogged marsh but also a good way to keep feet off the slimy and very product peat soil.  There's water out in the pond, shade under tamarack, black and nutritious dirt for growth below; in its whole a wild filtering machine where biota works stalk in beak to propel thousands of cattail seeds. Cover no doubt makes small frye fish feel a little more safe. A bufflehead might work around the island out off the main channel seeking the frye if the crane doesn't get to it first.  These are merely the functioning and the livelihoods. What do we know of humans' ability to perceive and understand natural symbols? If Wisconsin is known as the drift less area, it might also be known as one part of the most vast marshland stretches in the world as part of the Mississippi River Watershed.  The twenty minute walk across the convenient spans of two by fours is a short tunnel through 20,000 thousands of years.  To replant a tamarack on the farm is worth a good bit more than the two hundred dollars it costs to buy the tree.



  

Experiments in Hlaf

"In Egypt they ate quite simply. Every-day bread was made from spelt, the dried pounded centers of the sacred lotus plants, and for feasts fine wheaten flour in loaves. They caught fish and spread them in the sun to dry, thick with salt."  – M.F.K. Fisher, "Greek Honey and the Hon-ZO"









As I look through the bottom rack of the grocery shelf for the latest organic instant packet for some form of bread making or another, I have nothing over the ancients. I take my boxed packet of banana bread home with me, quickly read the illustrated instructions on back – whip the liquids, add nuts (if chosen), then add the mix, stir and unload into a greased pan. Bake for an hour and it is nicely assured that my kitchen at least will smell of that wonderful combination of banana and grain that is impossible to duplicate in any other way but baking.  I like that it is fast and do appreciate made banana bread over store-bough, no how good that version is.  At the moment of cutting through the first piece, as it still steams in the middle, and lather with a pat of butter, I think back to the hundred loaves that I 'made' via the bread machine, the familiar sound of the cycles from warming, to mixing, to sitting and rising and finally baking. Again, the kitchen alive with a sort of genetically familiar smell that got there in the DNA from 30,000 years of the human history of baking.  I too have tried my hand at the hand mixing of ingredients, the eventual fold-over and the baking, but it has always felt something like the novice fisherman who is sent out into the middle of the lake to find his catch not knowing where and why they may lurk. Anybody can hold a pole and swing a line; the good

fisherman knows the edges of the structures of the lake, time of day, and that the size of the common frog he is trying to replicate. To that analogy it seems a responsible thing to do find out first that the Old English word for bread was hlaf, or modern loaf.  Bread, as we might imagine, is one of the oldest known prepared foods beyond the simplest form of feeding, hunting or gathering.  It's fascinating to consider the process of my bread box mix to an ancient process of extracting roots of plants like cattails and ferns, spread out on a rock, then placed over a fire to form a primitive flatbread. In that case, I wonder of the cooked cattail smell around the small camp fire and flashes of insight that might have arisen as the tasters, certainly admiring the creation, thought that perhaps the cattail bread was a bit bitter, and wondered if there might be a way to sweeten.  My own banana bread turned out quite sweet despite using only moderately ripe bananas (poor planning). It will be moist inside its plastic bag for over a week and the butter I lather over its top will add an enhanced form of sweetener that turns the bread to dessert. I wonder how long it took for the ancients of tropical climes to consider squashed banana as a stabilizer?