And yet. This year up in northern Minnesota, balancing on a sunny granite rock in a Lake Superior cove, I pulled out my iPhone and took silly, shaky video. Because in the last 100-degree days of August or in the gray, woolly depth of winter, I might wish to hear water splash and wind over a lake. I may need a few seconds of the most full-hearted minutes all year, less memory than talisman, Josie’s wet sandals and the gull sky, and nowhere to be. From the lake to my head and into my hands, and for once, video does the trick.

For us the surest sign is a road trip, one we’ve taken every end-of-summer for years, up to northern Minnesota – way up north, as they say, near the Boundary Waters. So sacred is this trip to our little family that I believe if we did not make the drive, time might stop and summer would never end. And if the prospect of a sweaty, eternal August scares you, don’t worry: while there’s breath in our bodies and gas in the car, we will not miss granite coves or wild blueberry danishes or glittering Lake Superior, so wide and welcome and cold.

Thus we are off toward Highway 61 – revisited – in just a few days. And before I break into song about pine trees and seagulls and pie, I’d better make with today’s ten words:

——-

Road trip

Due north

Beloved berry break

Fish, cake

Cool.

What’s your favorite road trip?

Hope you’ve been enjoying a marvelous summer. I’ll be back soon with a few longer posts, a few food posts and a few sweet surprises.

ah, last year.

More of Minnesota’s North Shore:

Josie and the Pie, with Diamonds

Comfort for the Too Close

And no, I’ve not abandoned blogging. I haven’t vanished, nor fallen off the earth or into a ditch by the side of the road. Though certainly, I appreciate the concern – voiced by many of you dear souls – that I could be, I’m not. I am in fact just where we left off: squinting at a laptop, coffee to the left, Cleo near my feet and two steps from the kitchen.

So then, where have I been?

As noted, mostly here. I’ve been working on the work of writing – a few projects, each requiring keyboard, coffee, and 10% nuts-90% chocolate trail mix. Nothing to announce. Just send love, luck, and extra chocolate chips.

We spent Josie’s spring break here:

Of course, not in this spot, not the whole time.

We were also here

And eating, here

And oh please more, here.

We had wonderful meals in NYC and met up with new and old friends, including Amanda and Merrill, the brilliant ladies of food52…

…and surrounded by waves and sky, one great big grande dame.

Back home, Simmer’s been hopping around the web. Both PaulaDeen.com and Flashlight Worthy Books featured our Great Reads for Culinary Kids (and Hungry Adults) lists, and the New York Daily News blog Mothership Meals tapped Two-Bite Jam Tarts as a baking pick for picky kids.

So there we are. How pleasurable to speak fluent Simmer again, an odd language I use when talking to a warm, invisible group that’s not invisible at all. Still simmering, and glad you’re here.

And…beer. Did I mention the beer? Like an amber line on the map, beer, serious bier, trailed us all through Bavaria. Beer is somehow beautiful over there; all hefty steins and tradition and frosty hopped-up light. That, or I was just on vacation. Either way me and beer, we’ve not always been friends. As an eager college drinker I’d throw up – Greg’s hair-holding skills sealed our deal – and later, a moderation-minded adult, I’d try excellent “artisan” beers and my nervous stomach would think it ate three loaves of bread. An uneasy truce, at best.

On this trip we traveled with my brother-in-law Stephen and his wife, Moa, a native Swede whose sociable, even-handed beer skills could put most European men to shame. She was happy. Greg and Stephen were deliriously happy. They were all three happy to explore the sudsy maze of cafes, cellars and stubes. And me? Come follow the amber line:

In Salzburg we visit Zum Fidelen Affen, which we thought meant something about a loyal monkey, but a waiter reveals it’s The Funky Monkey. Actually, the waiter says, it’s “funny” monkey, but “I just like to call it funky.”

In this friendly, wood-beamed room I discover the joys of rotwein gespritzt - red wine spritzer – and also free, fresh-baked pretzels. I will find out fast in other places that free pretzels don’t always mean good pretzels – but here they are both free and good. I suddenly feel great loyalty to The Funky Monkey, and resolve to become a great Austrian beer drinker, and get more pretzels.

I overdo it at The Monkey. At Gasthaus Somethingplatz I start ordering bottles of plain wasser, and by late afternoon in Mozartplatz, at a place possibly called Mozartbar, I start drinking peppermint tea. I am traveling, and careful. I am boring, and this annoys me. So I down a tall Pils, get twitchy, and then go back to sipping tea.

In Munich we visit a true temple of bier, the Hofbrauhaus, founded in 1592. Here, servers (some in traditional, half-laced St. Pauli girl-garb) rush liter beer steins, sometimes eight in each hand, to long wooden tables stuffed with locals, tourists, yuppies and grandmas. They eat weisswursts and clink glasses and have a marvelous time. I am about to succumb to the liter – an optimistic move, at best  – when I discover the Radler. Part beer, part lemonade, it’s similar to the English Shandy and a great beer compromise for me, or, as Greg concludes, “a tasty little kid’s beer.” I love the Radler, hoist it with two hands and drink every drop. Greg and Stephen are amused. Now if they only put coffee in beer, I tell them, then you’d see some drinking.

And speaking of drinking, the Hofbrauhaus sees a lot of it. Most don’t get drunk, exactly  – a higher tolerance than weak Americans – but the group right behind us, the big table of young, super-buff Italian guys? They gave their best impression of trying to drink all the beer in Germany.

They got more excitable round after round, yelling toasts and smashing heavy steins together. They broke into drinking songs, pounding beers, fists and cameras on the table, and each time they pounded, the beers jumped. Our table mates were Russian, the rowdy boys were Italian and the old ladies at the next table over were German, tut-tutting the rowdies. It was all very cavernous and beamed, cozy and sloshing. I slurped my Radler, smiled at my husband, read the beer-soaked carved initials lining wood planks. We shared another salty pretzel, smelled amber and lemon and hops, and I let that Bavarian afternoon drift away.

Maybe it’s all the extra change I’ve fed the Lawrence parking meters. All accidental, true, but still, paying it forward, no? Or maybe a tolerance reward, for that man next to me on the plane from Dusseldorf, the one who cheerfully interrogated my life’s history, who performed backbend yoga in the aisle, who veered in and out of nausea and ate all my ginger candies.

I don’t know. But whatever I did to deserve apple strudel and snowball-sized whipped cream in my coffee, I’m grateful. And I’ll take it.

Tomorrow we leave this beautiful city, Vienna, and train down to Salzburg. Oh sure, it’s Mozart’s hometown, but it’s also the first place I ever saw in Europe, back in 1990, when I was younger, less brave, and afraid to taste the city. That trip’s highlights: sleeping atop my padlocked backpack, throwing up alone on a mountain and, courtesy of a near-consumptive cold, eating only Fisherman’s Friend cough drops for two days. I promised Greg I wouldn’t trip too hard down memory lane this time in Salzburg; but I didn’t promise you. A few stories to come along with reports on wiener schnitzel, hot wine and enough Palatschinken to feed us all. Happy Holidays with love, from your Simmering correspondent in Austria. It’s professional dessert research, and someone’s got to do it.

* extra credit and a virtual slice of Sachertorte: What does the post title have in common with Salzburg? Hint: jam, bread, and one hot captain with seven children.

Uncle Walt must think I’m not getting enough magic, because my laptop refuses to connect to their Interwebs. Thus the first-ever Simmer report from my iPhone, short, sweet and hoping this thing works.

Wherever you are, I hope you enjoyed a marvelous holiday with people you love and food you adore. And since I missed a proper stuffed, basted and cranberried feast, feel free to recap yours! From sunny, surreal, frizzy-haired Florida, wishing you and yours the best.

This is not new to me, missing the view, especially in the kitchen. Mostly I see cookies through a camera, or sauce on the back of a spoon. I whip meringue peering into a mixer by the second, watching for the right curve to appear on the right shiny peak. Details follow me out of the kitchen, too, as they did last summer when we tripped up to the North Woods for our annual beloved cooling-off. I brought my camera and also an unfortunate new habit, the blogger’s eye, which I turned first on breakfast.

We love to start the day in Lutsen Resort’s rustic dining room. There’s a hearty breakfast buffet, no tepid Sunday brunch but a much-loved, locally fresh, rush-the-table buffet. Now, we are people who drink coffee – for breakfast. We like to eat properly on Sunday, but nothing in our daily routine suggests even toast, let alone heaped plates of cheddar and wild rice eggs, smoked sausage, buttermilk biscuits and peppered rivers of gravy. And because you’re breathing brisk pine air and are certain you’ll hike it off, how about those pastries? Lemon custard squares, cinnamon bear claws, airy chocolate croissants. Wild blueberry danish.

It’s all tremendous – the glittering lake, fresh-baked danish, healthy air and caution to the wind. Feeling good, and a camera near the fork. Why not some pictures for the blog?

So I snapped away while they ate, aiming for special breakfast sunlight on special danish glaze. When Josie saw the pictures she said “Too much close-up or something.”

Too close? “I don’t know, the bacon. You made bacon look…gross?”  She was right. How did the smokiest bacon lose its looks? What’s with that blueberry? I backed the lens off the breakfast.

Out by the lake I tried pondering the horizon but wound up sifting tiny rocks, lake treasure. Cold waves rushed my feet and I tumbled sandy jasper, granite and maybe-agates through my hands. I brought the camera.

Further down the shore Greg and Josie were skipping rocks, the same rocks. Like shell seekers, the three of us like to wander the lake beach, sometimes separate, sometimes in all directions, somehow together. This time I sat in the sand, and told them I’d catch up.

I played with my camera, closer and closer to the rocks, mesmerized by green stripes and egg shapes and fossil dings.

Just around the time I found the zoom could capture jean fibers, I looked over, and up.

My husband loves to skip rocks. Lake Superior rock-skipping is art and sport, a thousand smooth chances to both relax and get it right. For a man who uses his brain all day – or perhaps precisely because of it – Greg is surprisingly devoted to throwing rocks into water. He’s as good at this no-brainer as it is good for him, nothing but bounces over waves. “Five,” he’ll say, “did you see that? Five.”

Josie’s been working at it for years too, with each summer using longer arms to best the master. When I looked up from my rocks that day, I saw this:


If I were still sifting rocks I’d have missed it, and if I’d followed them, I’d be in it.

We frequently wish to be where we’re not, always why am I here and should have been there, but for a few minutes in July I was right where I was supposed to be, wet feet and sandy rolled jeans, windy hair and heart bouncing down the shore, seeing what we’ve wrought and for once saying yes, here and now. Oh, yes to the wide view.

This is a flurry of activity, it is, after what we’ve called The Summer of Nothing. It seemed she did not want to do classes, or camps, nor any effort that required organization, even forming a line.  No, she wanted to swim, and hang with friends, scoop blueberry sundaes and climb rocks with old mom and dad in the cold waves of Lutsen, Minnesota. We let her, and now it’s back to the books.  Will her head be empty as the berry bowl, or charged by summer’s fruit? We’ll see.

———

Berries, sugar, water

Minnesota-toted blueberry jam

simmer

spoon

sauce remembers.

Easy Blueberry Sauce: simmer 1-2 pints blueberries with dash of sugar and splash of water. When warm and sugar has dissolved, add about 1 cup good-quality blueberry jam or preserves. Stir to melt and combine. Optional: add a squeeze of lemon or pinch of nutmeg for extra flavor. Serve warm over pancakes, waffles, ice cream. May also spoon directly into mouth.

For even more zing try adding another fresh summer fruit, like sliced peaches, plums or nectarines.

So – do you have a few words on berries? Pancakes, waffles, pound cakes or cobblers? Is there a pandowdy in the house? Tell me how you like your blueberries – and please, keep it to ten, and make it juicy.

We’re enjoying marvelous days of sunny breezes, cold waves and hearty, hike-inducing meals. And because the lodge dining room’s Swedish meatballs, house-cured gravlax and wild blueberry desserts aren’t enough, guests tend to follow dinner with a trip down the beach, nosing their way toward wood smoke and marshmallows, an endless summer fire.

The resort kindly dots driftwood benches with Hershey bars and grahams. Josie skips the crackers, preferring a sticky sandwich of chocolate and white. Her fingers are glued together after this unholy sugar melt. Until they’re licked apart.

I do like traditional s’mores, but as I’m more of a pretzel girl, I’m considering surprising tomorrow’s evening crowd with a bag of Rold Golds. My plan, from top to bottom: pretzel, chocolate, burnt marshmallow, chocolate, pretzel. Salty, sweet, creamy, on-vacation-but-tense-about-leaving. Josie and I have dubbed it the PMS’more.


That is all. Wish you were here, but hope you’re having your own marvelous time. By the way, my brother, sister and I were inveterate pyromaniacs who charred marshmallows over the stove each and every time my parents left the house. I’m just saying. You can play North Woods at home, and when I get home, I will.

Do you have marshmallow memories, or – like me – memory like a marshmallow. Do you toast golden, or go for the full char? Banana boats or s’mores? Tell your camp tales in the comments – and tune into Simmer all week for lovely surprise guests.

While we’re gone next week, I’ve arranged for a few very special guest posts. I know you’ll love them – but in the meantime, while Greg zones for hundreds of miles and I nibble pretzels and read magazines ’til my eyes pop, let’s do some link love. Bloggers are a generous and fascinating breed – many of them have been awfully good to me, and it’s time to give back. Let’s see what’s virtually happening right now:

Over at A Way to Garden, the genius that is Margaret Roach is answering all your garden questions. She’s also written a very sweet piece about how the web works in mysterious ways, bringing together bloggers like our pal April at Coal Creek Farm, sister Marion Roach of The Sister Project, old friend and crafty crafter Alicia Paulson at Posie Gets Cozy, the delightful Shauna of Gluten-Free Girl, and the very talented Jennifer Rae Atkins from The Daily Mammal. Margaret weaves everyone together in her friendly, dewy web; for great reads, check all of them out.

Speaking of April, the happy chicken-butcherer of Coal Creek Farm has written not one but two posts on how she met Margaret Roach, learned a lot and  improved her yard. It’s a must-see adventure in Kansas gardening.

My carp-tastic friend Jean at Renovation Therapy has a super craft post up: how to make lovely cake stands out of thrift-shop finds like old cups and plates.  It’s fast, inexpensive, and pretty. And like a lot of Jean’s posts, it features pics of Penny & Tucker, rising blog stars and all-around cute kittens.

The plot thickens: Marvelous Paige Orloff, writer and Sister Project blogger, profiled her fellow sister-citizen Margaret Roach for Berkshire Living magazine. What’s the before and after like when you write about a close friend? Find out here.

If you can’t stand the heat, dear Sara Reddy Coyne from Culinerapy has whipped up a summer drink to die for, a stay-out-of-the-kitchen cooler that I can’t wait to mix.  Try chilling with her Watermelon Lime Agua Fresca, and read more about wonderful reality-TV writer Sara in her Tell Simmer interview, here.

Finally, Always Order Dessert’s Alejandra Ramos offers a gorgeous way to eat summer’s sour cherries: prepare to swoon for these Sour Cherry Financiers, mini golden almond cakes baked with juicy red gems. I’d like one or two, or maybe a dozen, for my car ride. I’ll settle for pretzels; you try the cakes.

That is all. Enjoy your weekend, enjoy the links and the guest posts, and please don’t wreck the place while I’m gone. Someone has to clean up around here, you know.