some kinda good

My friend Shannon proposed 26 Letters in 26 Days, in which one blogs for the first 26 days in November about 26 things one is thankful for and using the ordered letters of the alphabet. Sounds like fun and a good way to take stock of the good stuff. November snuck up on me or my mind is slipping or whatever; I’m a day late starting.

And, I’m starting now:

When my children were little, they had three little books their dad had from his childhood years in London. All were about Ant and Bee, an ant and a bee who were dear friends and who lived together in a Cup. Ant and Bee had adventures that took them on 26-page-or-so tours of the alphabet. They met a Dog, they had Tea, they walked by a Yew tree, they turned on a Spigot.

These were sturdy little volumes with homespun illustrations that made me feel grounded and safe. I loved the words, and I loved reading them to my kids. Each volume felt comfortable in my hands, manageable while I snuggled a child in one arm and carefully pointed out words and drawings.

I’m grateful for Ant and Bee, for grandparents who once were parents who read to a son who became a father who saved some books from long-ago London to read in 1980s Mobile and 1990s Fredericksburg to the children I cherish – Always.

My grandmother, who was of the Trumbos and Mathiases of West Virginia, grew the lima beans her family brought with them from the mountains. My father’s mother, she was the youngest of six and was happy to have been born in relatively flat, fertile southern Fauquier County, Va. She saved her limas every fall, as a handful of my cousins still do today.

When they started gardening in the 1950s, my mother and father turned from tradition and raised a Burpee climbing variety. They bought “fresh” seed each spring, until the early ’70s, when my mother read in the small, gray pages of Organic Gardening about Dr. Martin’s lima beans. The piece claimed Dr. Martin’s were the best beans anywhere, were hard to find, and were even harder to grow – but they were worth it.

A couple in New Jersey sent my mother her first seeds. Every year, my mother ordered from them. Through the years, they became good friends over the beautiful lime-green legumes, exchanging by mail not only seeds, but newsy letters, growing tips, and photos of the beans.

My mother and I swear Dr. Martin’s ruin you for other lima beans. They are tasty and enormous with a creamy texture. They never get mealy – even when the beans get to two inches long. Because of that, they grow on her farm, where what was nearly an acre of garden has shrunk to a small plot. And they grow in my little city yard, where there is barely enough sun to produce a worthwhile crop.

Mom lost track of the N.J. couple after the Mrs. had a stroke several years ago. Now, with no certain supplier, my mother carefully saves the seeds each year, as I do.

In Virginia, you’ve got to start Dr. Martin’s lima beans indoors well before the last frost. In mid-April, I soak the beans saved from the previous harvest. When they are soft, I tuck them in individual peat pots in the best soil I can find. A tray-full, covered with plastic wrap and settled on a warm heating pad, makes a cozy nursery. Usually I’ll see the burst bean emerge through the soil, surrounding the new leaves, in five to seven days.

After this, the plants need full warm sun or a grow light to produce sturdy stems and the characteristic emerald leaves so eager to climb. The full-size plants can reach 12-15 feet in the garden, so they’ll need strong support and lots of room to grow.

Plant them in the garden before the soil warms and they won’t do much but chill. Plant them in full sun in warm, rich soil, four-to-six feet apart and they’ll take off. Though they prefer tall supports, mine are homemade bamboo trellises that are about seven-feet tall. My mother has rows of permanent wire fences in her garden, devoted solely to her Dr. Martin’s.

Given what they need, the young plants will spend June laying vine and foliage, then the blossoms – and the bees – will come. Dr. Martin’s limas teach patience – the very minimum time I’ve waited to get the first single bean is 90 days from in-ground planting. To get a good mess of them takes four months of full sun, water, and no ground hogs.

Once the pods appear, leave them on the vine until they are heavy and full. Hold them up to the sunlight to check the bean size. But don’t judge Dr. Martin’s by other garden variety limas – let them get much larger. These beans are delicious even when they are one-and-a-half-inches long. Though you can eat them at any size, don’t let them hang until they harden and dry, except the ones you want to save for next year. Unless frost is imminent, I don’t harvest them unless the beans are at least an inch long.

Just as they were more than 30 years ago, Dr. Martin’s lima beans are still difficult to find. The first year I didn’t have my own, I ordered the Pennsylvania heirloom from the Landis Valley Museum. The New York Times reported that they are sometimes offered to members of the Seed Savers Exchange, and by Rohrer Seeds.

Every year when the heat of summer hits – after all the sprouting and the potting and the trellising and the growing – I SWEAR that I’ll never grow these pain-in-the-back beans again. Then, late August comes, with swelling pods and bees on beautiful blossoms and the promise of fall. By mid-October, the weather has turned cool, and I’m harvesting them under a blue sky, maybe shelling them with a friend as the leaves are beginning to put on a show. I cook up a pot, with a little butter and black pepper, and it’s all worth it. They really are that good.

On Sunday, I picked a handful of figs from the tree in my back yard in Fredericksburg, Va. Usually, by this time of year, the figs are little greenish brown stones hanging from the fading tree, so this was a wonderful gift. They didn’t taste luscious like September figs, but they were soft, ripe figs, and they were mine for the picking.

Another beautiful surprise was that the caracalla vine, a tropical beauty that winters unattended in my basement, is still unwinding its fragrant helix blossoms. If you don’t grow one, consider it; it is well worth the effort. The story is that Thomas Jefferson grew it at Monticello.

I’m making biscuits for Charlie Borst this weekend as part of a dinner to accompany a viewing of “To Kill a Mockingbird.” I heard Charlie was doing the cooking and offered to help. He had it under control, he said, but was pondering biscuits.

I’m serious about making biscuits. My mother was serious about making biscuits. My grandmother, who cured her own salt ham, was serious about making biscuits.

Charlie figured he needed about five dozen biscuits for this Southern soiree, so I called my mom. Don’t get me wrong; I make a good biscuit, but we just needed to talk about this upcoming biscuit baking. And, in the course of the conversation, Mom invoked my grandmother, whom we called Maw (really), and then she invoked Maw’s biscuit recipe.

That’s how food conversations go in my family. If it is something that’s a tradition, we have to get to the root of the recipe, then discuss how the recipe has evolved.

Maw made them with lard, then graduated to the thought-to-be-healthier Crisco. Mom used Crisco when I was a kid, I knew. She graduated to half Crisco and half butter, but these days, she said in a guilty stage whisper, she uses all butter.

My mother makes the best biscuits I have ever tasted. And, without a doubt, they are the very best biscuits in all of Fauquier County, and perhaps in all of Virginia. So, here is her recipe, as told to me by phone just last night.

Bobbie Trenis’ biscuits
makes about 10
preheat oven to 425 degrees F

4 T. cold butter, unsalted
——–
2 cups flour
2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. sugar (optional, use 1 T. if you’re using for shortcake)
1/2 tsp. salt
——–
approximately 3/4 cups milk

Mix together the dry ingredients in a medium sized bowl. Mix thoroughly. Cut the butter into about 8 pieces (to make it easier to work in) and put in separate pieces on top of the flour mix. Cut the butter into the flour: you can use a pastry fork or two knives. I’ve done both and they both work well.

Cut in until the butter is the size of small peas.

When the flour mix is full of little butter peas, measure 3/4 cups cold milk.

Make a little well in the flour and pour in about 1/2 cup of milk. Mix lightly with a fork for just a few stirs. You want a moist and tender dough here, so quickly assess if you need more liquid. If it’s a dry, floury dough, add more milk, up to the full amount. Mix the dough fairly well, until there isn’t much dry flour mix in the bottom of the bowl.

Sprinkle a little flour on the counter. Turn out dough onto the surface.

Pull the dough together to make a ball, but don’t work the dough much to do this. Knead the ball by folding it over on itself and flattening it with the palm of your hand. Do this for 11 strokes — no kidding — only 11!

Pat the dough out with your hands or roll with a baking pin to a circle of about 10 inches in diameter. It’ll be about 1/2 inch thick.

Cut with a round cookie cutter, a tuna can with top and bottom cut off, or cut into squares with a knife.

Put on a lightly greased baking sheet OR on parchment on a baking sheet. I use parchment. Mom uses a little vegetable spray. Maw used an ungreased pan.

Put in a hot oven, 425, for about 15 minutes. I bake them on a double (insulated) baking sheet. The biscuits will be nice and brown when they are ready. You know what to do after this.

A couple of notes:
–Mom uses freshly ground soft whole wheat flour these days, unless company is coming.
–These are best eaten the day they are baked. If you eat on subsequent days, split and toast. Serve with butter and jam.
–These make nom shortcake, the kind you tuck under strawberries and cream. Add 1 T. sugar to the dough for this treatment. If you want for-company shortcake, dip the raw biscuits in melted butter, roll in sugar, and bake.

I know in Monroeville, Ala., they eat biscuits. But, if my memory serves from reading “To Kill a Mockingbird” while visiting Nell “Harper” Lee‘s hometown, Scout liked Lane cake, too. (“Miss Maudie baked a Lane cake so loaded with shinny it made me tight.”) That got me curious and hoping for the opportunity to try to make a Lane cake soon. I also plan to plant some camellias in my garden Saturday morning, before the “Mockingbird”showing, and I’ll be thinking of sending graceful blossoms as a gift, in a candy box.

[I added photos Monday, Oct. 26, 2009. Charlie's dinner was wonderful, but it was really Charlie and Elizabeth's. They made fried chicken (Charlie's -- buttermilk and quite perfect), potato salad with sweet and whites (not traditional but so delicious with capers), green beans, salt ham, cole slaw, Elizabeth's corn pudding (tres authentic and delish -- she said whipping cream is her secret), lemon bars, and pecan bars. And, chicory coffee and a real coconut cake brought in to celebrate a birthday. The movie was a delight. No one left hungry. I felt like I had been to a Catlett United Methodist Church supper, circa 1970.]

Riding in the truck to Richmond to pick up Richfood groceries for my uncle’s cash-and-carry had its rewards: grits at the truck stop. If you don’t “get” grits, think polenta. If you also don’t get polenta, then bless your soul.

Northern Italy and THE South share their love of ground dried corn. The Italians crafted theirs into polenta as well as sweets such as Venice’s zaletti and Mantova’s sbrisolona. Dixie belles whip up corn bread, spoon bread, hominy, and grits.

If you’re a polenta fan, you should be a quick convert to real grits. Virginians tend to pair grits with things porcine – bacon, sausage, country ham. In the Old Dominion, grits for breakfast usually involves the aforementioned plus eggs, sunny-side-up so you can use the golden yolks as a velvety sauce. The Richmond truck stop of my childhood served them with lots of butter and black pepper. My Alabama-born Italo-American daughter likes hers with cheese and more cheese.

South Carolinians are famous for their grits (made with cream) and shrimp. In the mountains of Virginia I’ve had delightful venison stew on grits. At home, I make an Italian-style venison stew with juniper berries that I have served on polenta or its American cousin.

At home, we sliced and fried leftover grits with bacon. Fry ‘em in olive oil, grill ‘em, melt cheese on ‘em – cheddar, Taleggio, American. Make a Sunday lunch cheese-and-grits casserole. Slip ‘em under an authentic ragu Bolognese. Don’t make no never mind!

My favorite grits come from Stratford Hall Plantation. Buy a bag of the coarsely ground white corn during a (highly recommended) visit to the birthplace of Robert E. Lee. The mill runs infrequently anymore, since miller Steve Bashore moved to Mount Vernon’s gristmill. Mabry Mill, just off the Blue Ridge Parkway in Floyd County, Va., mills delicious yellow grits, and is another great place to visit if you’re in that area. You might hear some good old-time music if you time it right.

If you’re not in my neck of the woods, try whole grain corn grits from the grocery store, and expect to wash them and then cook them for about 25 minutes. Don’t bother with instant or fast-cooking.

I follow my version of the directions on the Stratford Hall grits bag – wash the grits in a deep kettle or bowl in plenty of water to separate the chaff from the grain. For every one cup of wet grits, add about three cups of water to a pot, add the grits and salt to taste. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to simmer. Simmer, stirring occasionally for about 15 to 20 minutes. When the grits start to be very thick, stir almost constantly. Total cooking time should be at least 25 minutes.

Once you get used to making grits, you won’t need to follow this recipe too strictly: use milk, broth, herbs, stir in cheese, jalapenos.

Nowadays, even Southerners don’t eat grits every day, and I don’t expect you to eat them every day, either. Just get to know the gal; you might like her.

An October Sunday breakfast: hot coffee, Papa Weaver's pork sausage, simmering grits, and fried apples