Hillery Occasionally

What I was going to tell you about next was how the first thing I did when The Man and I got back to New York was to go shopping, but shopping for things I had not been able to buy in the middle of nowhere. How it’s difficult to shift gears between complete solitude and the diverse energized populous of New York City. But today I find myself sealing up boxes, shipping all of my things back to Brooklyn. Not because I’ll need them for our next stint in the city, but because I’m going back alone…for good.

The truth is, I’ve been pondering the idea of leaving for some time. And after the decision was made, I kept looking around this place wondering what I thought I was doing here. How could a happy existence in a place that is not just foreign, but so not me, have ever seemed possible. Then I remember that whenever those thoughts struck me in the past, I looked over at The Man and was flooded with love and contentedness. That love is still there, but at some point the give and take of it dwindled and the loneliness of life in that vacuum was overwhelming.

Not until today, my last day here, did I allow myself to dwell on the beauty I experienced here, not just in the landscape but in those stages of love we have passed through. I’ve never given myself so completely to anyone and for a long time I was accepted and treasured in a manner I’ve not before known. These are the things I will miss and allowing myself this awareness is what is making it difficult for me to leave. The hope of having it all back is what made me stay as long as I did.

So as I wash my clothes and pack my bags, I’m struck with images that will stay with me forever. The Man’s face in the morning light before he wakes up, the lights on in our house at dusk seen against the mountains from up the hill on the deck of the sauna, waking up at the hot springs and negotiating our way through
the snowy woods to the warm water, among many others. And suddenly it’s hard to leave all of that promise and feeling behind even though I know I must…leave for good.

At least I’m hoping the good will come when I get there. Going home, I have to piece my life back together and I’m challenging myself to do so in a way that will feel more satisfying than the life I left behind when I came here. Because hindsight can make you distrust your own judgment and I don’t want to spend the next six months resenting myself, or The Man, for taking the chances we did. I want to be able to see this time I’ve spent and this love I’ve given as yet another length of rope that if I hadn’t taken the trouble to climb, I wouldn’t be where I’m going. I hope I can.

Not everyone has whole salmon lying around the house and this is probably why I had difficulty finding a good recipe for salmon chowder or salmon stock. We were lucky enough to have two whole sockeyes delivered the other day and after one was filleted and the other cut up for steaks, I decided to make something out of the leftovers. Here is what I came up with!

Salmon Stock

Choose a pot big enough to accommodate the size/amount of fish heads and bones you have available. Start by sautéing roughly chopped onions, celery, and carrots in a small amount of butter. Once the onions have become translucent add some dry white wine, enough to give juice to the bottom of your pan. Add about a tablespoon of whole peppercorns (white are preferred, but black or a mix will do), at least five sprigs of fresh thyme and maybe a half-teaspoon of salt. These measurements will depend on the bulk of you batch. Place the fish heads and bones (cleaned with gills removed) in the pot and add just enough water to cover the contents. Bring to a boil and simmer for twenty minutes. You will notice a light brown foam emerging as the stock cooks. You can try to remove it while the stock simmers, but I find this tedious and not very efficient. It is important not to overcook, so after the stock has simmered remove it from heat and let stand for ten minutes. Prepare a colander lined with cheesecloth (at least four layers) and strain the broth, removing all solids and most of the foam. The stock is now complete and should be refrigerated or frozen immediately, lasting three days in the refrigerator and up to two months in the freezer.

Salmon Chowder

6 tbsps butter
1 small onion (finely diced)
1 small leek (finely diced)
4 tbsps flour
3 cups salmon stock
3 cups whole milk (heated)
6 to 8 boiling potatoes (peeled and cubed)
2 cups frozen corn
fresh salmon meat (use your leftovers as I did, but aim for a pound)
¼ cup red pepper (finely diced)
¼ cup fresh dill (chopped)
¼ cup dry white wine
1 tsp salt
ground pepper to taste
dash paprika

Sauté the leeks and onions in the butter over low heat for about five minutes, then whisk in the flour and cook for three minutes. Turn your heat up to medium-high and add the milk and stock, bring to a boil stirring frequently. Add the potatoes and salt and simmer on medium heat for ten to fifteen minutes.

At this point you want to cut your salmon into bite-sized pieces, making sure there are no bones. If you have steak meat rather than filet, you may want to cook the pieces in the soup first and then take them out to more easily remove the bones and chop the meat.

Add the corn and salmon and continue to simmer for about five minutes until the potatoes are soft and the salmon slightly firm. Finish with the dill, red pepper, white wine, paprika, and salt and pepper to taste.

Next time I’m going to try it with mushrooms. If you discover any improvements, let me know!

My garden is coming to the point where its contents are actually recognizable as precursors to their eventual result. Since I started my seeds in little incubated pods in March, this has been a long time coming.
Having lived my entire adult life up to this year in Manhattan and Brooklyn, this is my first gardening experience so forgive me for the many pictures. I’m just so excited to see my babies growing up! As The Man says, “Soon we’ll be eating our own.”

Up on the deck in the planters we built in the spring, we’ve already had two harvests of beans and mixed lettuces.
The carrots are maturing nicely alongside beets and our Portugal peppers are finally starting to turn red. While the rest of my herbs are inside, the basil flourishes in the hot sun.
I’ve been making pesto!

We have a big animal-feeding trough out front and I transplanted all my tomato plants there as soon as we got back in June.
The deer decided, “Lunch!” So we surrounded it with chicken wire. It’s very dense in there now, but the little guys seem to be doing well. I’ll have to figure out another place to plant them next year so I can space them out a bit.

Before we left for Montreal I dug out a new plot with a pick-ax and a shovel. The earth here is all sediment and rocks and the weather is usually sunny with the temperature in the nineties, so it was quite a job. I planted potatoes in most of it to break up the soil for next year and sowed some spinach, mixed greens, and parsley in the shadier part.
It was a boon to see so much progress when we got home.

Of course, I’m already thinking about next year and more plots. I want raspberries and strawberries, maybe where the potatoes are now. I’m thinking of moving the feeding trough and digging out a bigger space for the tomatoes out front in the Southern exposure. 
The Man planted a grapevine a few years ago that climbs up a pot to the deck and we planted another one on the side in June. How long does it take to plant a vineyard?!

Having spent the last two weeks in Montreal, sleeping in a hotel and eating in restaurants, I am reminded of one of the many annoying foreign customers I used to have to deal with as a waiter. Contemplating the breakfast menu at the French bistro where I worked, an attractive woman looked up at me and, in dismay, announced in a thick European accent, “This is not my favorite breakfast.”

Not knowing how else to respond, I smiled. Then came a long succession of carefully composed questions through which the woman was clearly trying to fashion something akin to her favorite breakfast. Could the soft-boiled eggs be boiled hard? Were olives available? Capers? Multigrain toast? By the time we got to mozzarella cheese, she was exasperated by my inability to meet what she considered to be quite basic requirements. “Why?” she asked. “Because this is a French restaurant,” I replied, before I could stop myself and think of a way to cushion the blow of the obvious. Perhaps neither of us had had her coffee yet. All this lady could muster was, “But you are not French!”

I told this story many times at the restaurant, comforting my peers in the wait-until-you-hear-this-one camaraderie that carries one through the rudeness, cheapness, and lack of sophistication you have to swallow when you work in the service industry. Now, snatched from my fifteen-year bubble of New Yorker-ness and finding myself in the most unexpected places, I’m on the lady’s side. When I finally found a real bagel shop in Montreal I had to take my bounty back to my hotel to administer the schmear. They didn’t even have toasters there and all the cream cheese was sold in prepackaged to go cartons. The sacrilege!

That said, The Man and I did manage to eat very well in this town and since Montreal had little else to offer us I thought I’d stick to saying something nice rather than nothing at all and share our recommendations.

Alexandre Restaurant Fraincais (1454 Rue Peel) A basic bistro with reasonable prices and reliable fare, their Steak Frites and Salade Niçoise are undeniably authentic. Café tables on the sidewalk afford an intimate view of other downtown diners going to and fro as well as the opportunity to smoke should you so desire.

Le Pois Penché (1230 Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest) Much more than a bistro, this space is inspired-going-on-gaudy with red velvet seats and red leather banquets set against florid faux French modernist paintings. The food, however, is beyond reproach. Fresh oysters, classic French salads, lobster risotto with a full half a tail, and gorgeous, richly prepared steaks. The wine list begs reckless abandon, but many lovely offerings are available by the glass.

Japonais Sushi Zenya (486 rue Sainte-Catherine Ouest) Tucked away upstairs from busy Catherine Street traffic, this dark and lovely sushi restaurant is the next best thing to Blue Ribbon on Sullivan Street in New York. No higher compliment is possible, so I’ll leave it at that.

Le Club Chasse et Pêche (423 St Claude) Definitely the best place we dined on the entire trip, I might even return to Montreal just for a meal here. Considering their website in advance, I noticed the menu was slight though eccentric. Our phenomenal waiter filled in all the blanks for us at the table, including explaining what we could expect if we ordered the “hot and solid meal,” which that evening was a 32 ounce filet mignon. He even persuaded us to parse our appetizers into separate courses to share, exhibiting no concern over turning our table. We chose one of their classic starters, suckling pig risotto garnished with foie gras. The wine list was again an invitation to hedonism, but we were well directed within our price range. Declining dessert, we were sent after dinner drinks on the house. Everything was amazing!

You may not be able to get a decent pizza or a bagel with a schmear in Montreal, but guess what—it’s not New York City. Once I came to terms with that obvious fact, I noticed that there were classic French patisseries everywhere and an embarrassment of very high quality foie gras. The service was excellent virtually everywhere we went, with nearly every waiter speaking both French and English fluently. We ate so well we never once had room for dessert.

Can I think of anything else to say that’s nice about Montreal? Well, they have a nice park…right in the middle of the city. I’m terrible!