Bridge by Winter Leaps


Bridge by winter leaps from side to side,
the banks but white lace of ice
and small dips made by days warm then cold again,
freezing, freezing forever to take
their solemn molds so temporary than collapse
to rolling sparkling puddles thin.

Bridge by winter leaps from side to side,
the elementary children cuddle over
inside thick red and black coats hooded
to keep out the knife wind that carries upstream
and onto the other side where they walk
to warm houses awaiting them in afternoon.

Bridge by winter leaps from side to side,
like a red pendulum which seeks the sun
to carry its own song of import against the tangle
of limb and great gobbed blocks of limestone
set along the shoreline to keep the simmering in
and the crystal water from running the streets.

Hey, Coach! ch. 18

The next day practice time came around and everybody was there except the 5th grade boys, not counting Scotty.  He looked out over the court waiting to see his teammates pile on from some corner of the gym.  The Girl and The Coach were over on the opposite sideline working dribbling drills and the other girls were shooting around.  Scotty pulled Little Brother over to find out what he knew.  "They were all at school today, none of them were sick," Toby said, checking his phone for any messages.  Just about every plan Scotty had been working on for the past three weeks just disappeared into empty gym space.  The Girl dribbled over to their side of the court. "So, where's our team anyway?  We're ready to go, gotta get them out here."  Unless there was some kind of concert that Scotty didn't know about, or unless every single boy had a dentist appointment after school, there was really only one other spot they could be. Scotty sent Little Brother over the main elementary building to check the two rooms for after school program.  What he found was exactly what Scotty feared. There was Will, Trent, Matt, Tyler, Henry, Randall and Carl, playing on green iPads weird games with animals or with skateboarders. Little Brother had enough.  He had been a part of this team scheme for just as long as Scotty had.  He had made a professional batch of cookies and had coordinated gym time. Enough was enough. He walked over to Trent, the most reasonable of them, and started to describe the great benefits of being on a basketball team. "Someday, they will be playing a video game with you on it. Just think! There's no way to become a pro by sitting in here. The coach is waiting for you." Trent looked at him like he was no-name runt. "Basketball? We thought that was just yesterday, that's all.  We don't want to play anymore." Henry slunked away to another desk and opened up a book as if he were going to study in an after school program! "Yeah, the coach is a girl!" Matt said, although he realized probably the best basketball in the entire school, and then some. "Why doesn't Scotty just coach us?" yelped out Randall. Randall was the tallest of the boys, a true center, but whose shoes were untied permanently and he wore nothing but long shorts year round. "Scotty is a fifth grade kid and he's on the team. He has to play," defended Little Brother. "Who cares who coaches.  We've got a team. We've got gym space. Besides there one other thing that will be there every single practice," he tempted. "What's that?" Will said in between thumb presses for fire on his iPad.  "Cookies!"

Riverside Ovens
Text Kitchen

It seems like it would be hard living without a stand-by chicken soup recipe.  When the mood strikes for comfort food, what's better than the brothy, noodley, concoction for a case of the winter chills?  I've gravitated back again to the same Family Cookbook Recipe which is simple, quick, and open for as many add-ons to the recipe list as there are flavors of choice.  The base starts off with sautéed onions, carrots and celery that is boiled in 6 cups of chicken broth, adding a cooked chicken, and then a curly pasta.  This is all easy enough -- all of it cooks well under half an hour and the broth in its own right turns out worth the time spent cooking.  But I always like to change up the type of chicken placed in the soup and I like to take a look in the refrigerator to see if there are other ingredients that might add texture, taste, or both.

This time around, along with the initial sautéed onions, I went ahead and added chopped baby bella mushrooms, knowing that chicken and broth are favorite matches for mushrooms, which I always feel, once cooked down, add a distinct subtle earthiness to just about anything and a great soft chunky

texture.  I cooked a dark chicken this time around, what are now called chicken tenders, well seasoned by paprika. Not only do I like the subtle bite of paprika, but I felt like it would affect the coloration of the soup as well, adding some depth of aroma.  By the time you add the cooked chicken broth to the vegetables and begin to boil, really the sky is the limit as to when to add the cooked chicken itself or the pasta. At this point, this time around, I had also decided to dice up skin-on red potatoes, and set them in the mixture to heat together in the broth, not too long though that the potatoes totally lose their structure.

For the pasta I chose what is called a multi-colored rotini, again adding color and texture.  I continued to test for tenderness of the pasta and for the softness of the cooked chicken.  Oils began to rise up through the broth, giving it that depth of released fat from the chicken.  We added some chips of basil

from our indoor planter over the top.  We cut up several Mediterranean Focaccia buns and used these on the side for dipping.  For this batch, the standard operation of onion and vegetable, broth, chicken, and pasta were there, but each slightly different than the time before.  In the end, we liked the mushrooms and paprika the best!

Hey, Coach! ch. 17

"That crazy kid! I thought, running to the jungle gym with Jimmy and Sheila right behind me. But it was too late. Fudge already found out he didn't have wings." – Fourth Grade Nothing









All in all the practice would not have been a total disaster if all the boys would have showed the following day for practice, but they hadn't.  The day before had played out about as close to something as a bad dream as you could come up, Scotty acknowledged to himself as he came out of the boy's locker room.  The boys had been asked to do nothing more than start in a square around the lane, for example, pass the ball to the next boy across from them, follow their pass, and so on, but something so fierce, so mysterious had come over them at that moment.  Even with the help of the eighth grade girls right there at each step, even showing them the drill, the boys forget virtually every rule of known coordination.  Tyler was supposed to pass to Randall, but instead passed it to Will.  Will might have tossed something that resembled a skip pass diagonally to Tyler. Oh Lordy. The coach watched the trauma of misdirection sinking eyes. "I want you to think of two things: first, a box has four points.  Fill in at a point.  Easy enough, ok?" Tyler looked up the coach as though she held a bowling ball. When she handed it to him, again and again, it was as though the ball slipped right through his hands. He looked left and right, what do I do now? "The second part is also very very easy boys, you can do this, I promise.  What direction do the hands on your watches go?" Of course this was a very dangerous question to the modern 5th grade boys who may or may not have ever seen a "hand" on a watch.  Indeed, Henry was wearing a watch, a digital certainly, and began to sort of move his hand in circles over the face of the watch.  "You mean like this," he said, feeling fairly proud for speaking up.  In the background three boys had slunk over the hoop behind them and started shooting airballs. "Get back over here, boys? Boys? Back over here." Coach had looked like maybe this was not going well. She lifted her shoulders up and raised her hands while looking over to Scotty in a pleading way, like, is this for real? "No, no. I mean a hand like on an old watch, you know, that click clicks, and moves in a direction and shows you the hour and the minute." The boys looked at her dumbfounded, each of them having grabbed their bowling balls by now, and ready to shoot at the nearest hoop.  All this talk of boxes and hands sounded a lot like school, which is where they just came from.  In their minds, enough was enough.  Let me move around wildly for awhile. "Hands on a watch move clockwise, this way," she said, spinning her hand. One or two sets of eyes showed some indication of connection to this information, but it was still faint.  Coach looked to the Girl. "Corey, you take over, figure this out, and we will talk about it all later." Coach was not mean, but she was tall and she was a parent. Nobody's parent for the boys though.  She was a total stranger. She was walking away.  Basketball hoops were now open season.  They leaped from their positions and began to make strange sounds, whooping, raising their hands as though veteran players on an NBA team looking to make a move. The Girl looked at Scotty, he looked back.  "I'm the coach now," she said, and gently gathered each boy by the shirt collar to let them know what they were there for.

Hey, Coach! ch. 16

"As soon as we got to the playground Sheila started chasing me. 'Peter's got the cooties! Peter's got the cooties!' she yelled." – Fourth Grade Nothing










You can tell fairly quickly that some fifth grade basketball players were born to play the game; others don't always have their shoes or socks on.  Scottie's team mostly consisted of this last bunch, Scotty being the main representative of the first bunch.  The eighth grade coach could see this right away as Scotty virtually sliced through any defense put up against him in drills, while the other boys made wild yowls to each other, or galloping instead of running.  Randall was still in school clothes, barefoot, because he didn't know if he was on a team officially. Carl remembered shoes, socks, and even shorts, but his main problem was that he forgot a shirt. His thick woven sweater, though, kept him quite warm he informed everybody else as he scooted around the low post with his hand up, "open, open, here, here."  Will and Trent were getting there.  They had seen a basketball before -- this was helpful to recognize the difference between a medicine ball and a basketball for all the standard reasons, the main one being that the medicine ball would not have bounced and very difficult to shoot all the way up to ten feet.  Really, though, the problem right there in the beginning, that very first practice, if it could be called that, was the boys were clearly convinced that they were still right outside on the pavement court for recess, running, jumping wildly, hands up, yelling, slinking off for a drink when thirst arose.  Scotty hoped for a better showing.  Without an adult somewhere out there helping, there was no way to get a team up off the ground.  He thought The Girls might have thrown them off the court by now, making the argument that this was a complete waste of gym time for her own team.  Well, as for the other handful of girls on the eighth grade team, the only look they gave out was one that had a question attached to it, and it was most likely thought by each of them: 'when do we get out of here, how do I plead with dad that I can no longer play his favorite sport.' The wheels were turning.  Chaos comes in many forms, but the concoction of fight grade boy and eighth grade girl might take the entire cake.  The boys still had one foot left back in fourth grade; the eighth grade girl was counting her days to high school, which meant driving a car and getting as much space between them and little boys.  The coach could see there was no answer, there was only patience and endurance, with a pile of hope thrown in for good measure.  Matt and Tyler had faded off to the corner of the gym throwing basketballs at each other's legs, for fun.  The eight grade girl walked over to the boys and, as legend would some day have it, took them each by the thin collars of their t-shirts (yes, t-shirts, a proud moment indeed), and yanked them back to the low post blocks. "You're on this team now. The basketball court isn't the playground.  If you want to play schoolyard ball, stay home.  If you are here, we'll play basketball." Everybody who heard this, of course assumed this would come off as a welcome invitation to take off, head home, yell, cuss, scream, jump around. It had the opposite affect. Matt and Tyler's chins drew down into their necks, their eyes drooped a quarter of an inch. Somehow, as if by magic, they found those basketball stances which must very well be so ancient that even the unskilled novice knows the 'triple threat' position.  They formed two lines, mixed boy / girl, and drove in to shoot layups.  One boy even made one.

Riverside Ovens
Test Kitchen

The two greatest secrets for success of the Blue Apron dining and delivery service for us are the simplicity of the cooking instructions that come along with the packaged meal, and the fact the

ingredients are pre-portioned.  One of the real problems with cooking gourmet at home is that invariably you end up buying more bok choy than you really need; or that you end up with a package of fresh basil from which you only needed two leaves; or the catfish sits in the refrigerator longer than what would be recommended to maintain its freshness.  Although overall too heavy in packaging to be truly sustainable, the Blue Apron at least solves the problem of wasted food because

each primary and secondary ingredient (the smallest bagged and wrapped as 'knick knacks') is used on the spot, for that particular meal, and is out of the refrigerator.  The one page, two-sided, graphic recipe card is also very visual and easy to follow with a step by step model that tends to offer even more simple to follow steps than standard cookbooks.  They even provide a checklist of boxes for dinner time cook who might have more on the mind than the béchamel and gratin assembly.  The ingredients make for an easy pre-cooking set-up; the visual steps provide for a near fail safe cooking program. Combined, the Blue Apron meal almost always turns out very good to great and that inspires the home cook to try more gourmet cooking, which is a very good thing.

Our most recent Blue Apron was the Blackened Cajun Catfish with Sweet Potato & Collard Green Gratin.  This is the perfect example of a meal that we might not have made otherwise. We cook fish quite often, but never catfish.  Since it was already picked for us, packaged well, and fresh, it looked to be a great choice and we were happy to try it.  Rarely would we ever apply cajun spicing to a meat for a family meal, but the packet was small and we only smattered a portion onto the fish so as not to become too spicy for anybody.  Often, you find that lightly seasoning something, even if the mixture is potent, will mostly cook off in the process in the pan with oil, leaving only a residual taste.

The gratin might have been something we would try otherwise -- we are all fans of yams and sweet potatoes and have tried any number of recipes including simply cutting them lengthwise in eighths and baking them as large fries.  The gratin is a process of simple pan frying to start, folding in chopped collard greens, water and lemon juice, cooking until the greens are mostly wilted.  At this point, with short cooking time and without any addition of spice, the gratin is a near super-food, yams and greens.  You come to add this combination to a béchamel sauce, consisting of butter, garlic, flour, milk, water. Combine the two, then bake for 20 minutes.

The catfish takes a simple pan fry in oil, 4-5 minutes per side. The exterior will have a coated brown look, the fish needs to be warm to hot through the center.  Put together, the béchamel vegetable gratin is a moist green up against a blackened fish that is surprisingly flavorful in its own right, with relatively no bones to fear.  In well under an hour's time, a meal that might not have tried is sitting on your plate, fresh, hot, and all used up.

Riverside Ovens
Test Kitchen

Over the years, we've all tried many chicken and rice dishes -- one of the most commonly voted favorite meals for the most people imaginable.  It's hard to go wrong when the extent of the simplest form of chicken and rice might be nothing more than spraying a baking pan with non-stick, stirring some cream of mushroom soup and water into the pan, mix with rice, then dropping your preferred portions of chicken over the top and setting in the oven.  If the rice seems to be getting baked too quickly, add some water or aluminum foil over the top.  Serve with veggies and the dish is an easy no-brainer.  Using the slow cooker for the Chicken with Saffron Rice allows some benefits as well.

One of the obvious advantages of slow cooking is the idea that you can begin the process early in the day and for the most part expect the dish to be done when you want it.  The other nice advantage of the slow cooker, though, is its ability to slowly mix flavors and its ability to more deeply cook meats. The intention of this recipe was to exhibit a couple of flavor profiles.  One of them is a nice onion mixture, eventually layered over the chicken pieces, consisting of sautéed yellow onion, garlic, oregano, salt and pepper.  The second is supposed to be the saffron mixture, nothing more than a 'large pinch' of saffron to soaked in 1/2 cup of white wine.

Since the text kitchen is mine, I went ahead and skipped this step, knowing a couple of things from the past: saffron is decidedly an interesting spice, both in flavor and in texture, but it has a kind of hay-like pungency that I haven't had a lot of success with; combined with white wine really added no benefit to my dish and I knew that there were other flavor centers to be added, including on the chicken itself.  As with most slow cooker meat recipes, this one also called for browning the meat before it goes in the slow cooker; for all of its advantages, the slow cooker, for the most part, is not made to brown, but made instead usually to soak or moisten.  I not only like to give the skins of meat a very solid sear, but I also added onto the skin a rotisserie spice, strong enough to hold up against three hours of soaking in among rice and water. I used a whole chicken, cut in pieces, placing the large breast pieces down first, the the thighs and drumsticks.  I then placed the onion mixture over than, 4 cups worth of chicken broth, then mixed in at least 2 cups of long grain white rice. I've

noticed that when the rice is first mixed in, it never looks like it will be enough portions to serve, but am almost always surprised by the amount of fluff that it produces at the end.  This time was no exception.  With 15 minutes left in the 3 hour cooking time, the recipe calls for adding one last texture, 2 large jarred roasted pimiento peppers, then to let that essentially steam for a final 15 minutes.  As I was looking through the deli section of the grocery store for this product, I came across what was called a roasted red pepper bruschetta spread that I thought would work nicely, and it did.  As a roasted product, most of the flavors of the peppers had calmed and you are left with subtle hints of soft red peppers and a lot of olive oil, which happens to add a nice moisture over the top of the somewhat dried white rice.

Over the top of this very densely textured and flavored rice mixture, I added a few stalks of simple cooked asparagus. The chicken was so soft the bones had a hard time staying inside the skin.  The rice had a comfort food quality that can only come from a slow cooking process.