Nine months is truly too long to be away from the annals of Quail Cottage. Our sincerest of apologies! We hope that you've not been frightened by our absence; rather, know that such beautiful creatures and dazzling occurrences have befell the Cottage inhabitants that it's been hard to find a few evenings free to document the numerous stories and happenings. A lot has changed, and a lot has stayed the same, and the easiest place to start is sometimes just right at the beginning.
Autumn began well, with a birthday party for Our Favorite Season right on the equinox. (It's almost like she was named for it, or something.) Dinner parties were no stranger to the Cottage that fall, with a number of experiments in play: the first being a delicious evolution from our usual toasty fires on the patio; a spit-like rotisserie system poached from those made for gas grills! Wire-tied to two car jacks for height, this hacked-together system rendered absolutely delightful rotisserie chickens from atop our flames. A Peruvian spice blend was our first attempt, and even despite the finagling with nearness to the heat, the meat was still dripping such savory juices, the tenderness like sinking your teeth into a pat of butter, and the flavor such a delicate taste with the hint of hearty tang from the fatty spiced skin. A masterpiece! This method (if not the same recipe) was repeated a number of times that fall, with mostly the same success. A few other meats and things were seared on the flames with a bit less finesse, although no less tasty: a huge leg of lamb, spiced in Mom's Famous Fennel Spice Rub; a large chuck roast, wrapped in thick slices of center-cut bacon for moisture and flavor; and lots and lots of vegetables, drizzled with fresh olive oil and herbs, wrapped in tinfoil, and shoved into the red-hot coals. More often than not these foods barely touch a cutting board before being popped in mouths; so delicious, can't wait, no plates needed!
Another food success that season was the crafting and perfection of Autumn's sourdough. On a continuous quest to find the perfect recipe, to John's delight she started practicing on the Tartine slow-rise recipe, which eventually proved to be the most delicate flavored, easiest to feed and sustain, and overall most beautifully textured. Using the lovely red Le Creuset dutch oven, she perfected the final rise and bake so well that what came out of the oven was simply brilliant; crust the most radiant golden brown, deep but not too hard, the loaf a perfect circle with decorative slits so well ordered on top, and the taste -- oh, a wedge of fresh cream butter melting so quickly on the steam rising from a freshly cut slice of sourdough, you get the delicate sour of the yeast underneath the salt of the butter dripping through the cracks -- there's nothing more perfect on a weekend morning than that taste. Autumn even had so much fun and success that she felt the need to get a second dutch oven, this one bite-sized! Or at least smaller enough that we two could enjoy a loaf without creating enough to feed the neighborhood. (John correctly understands, but does not say, that this was mostly an excuse to get another matching red dutch oven.)
With the success of the sourdough and the workings of the meadery, we joked that we should start a business; the Quail Cottage Yeastery! Indeed, yeast ran rampant through many of our foods and drinks; aching to get back to "a darn good batch of mead", John set out with a plan, a really large pot of water, and 40 pounds of honey, eventually bottling enough to sit in four milk crates with oversized bottles! But thankfully, after a bit of bottle conditioning, this batch was indeed a Darn Good Batch. We used Blackberry, Raspberry, Meadowfoam, and White Sage honeys, and each turned out simple astonishing; bubbles that rolled off the tongue with a champagne delicacy, a lovely semi-sweet honey palette, with a finish of whatever flavored the honey. With a squeeze of lemon for acid, it was a brilliant win, and fed our friends for many parties... only continuing to get better in the bottle these many months on.
And speaking of aging, another experiment began, one late Friday party with several friends around to help. The quarter cask wine barrel that had been sitting unused (stabilized with sulfated water, of course) was finally put back to use. Four cases of port was purchased from Trader Joe's, and all but a half dozen bottles made their way into that barrel! Plugged up and rolled (not really) back into the garage, it sat for many months while breathing into the rich oak of the barrel walls. (We tasted it recently; an amazing addition to such an inexpensive port! It mellowed out the harshness and added great depth. Must be de-kegged soon...)
Aside from food and wine and friends and parties, after long last we decided to open our doors to a foster care system suitable for working professionals. The Quail Cottage Cattery was started with a pair of siblings; Roz and Gil (named after Romeo's literary cousins) were a great introduction to the world of fostering cats. Gil was large and brotherly, while Roz secretly dreamed she would grow up one day into a bobcat. Although they had other names in a previous life, all cats that come through our doors get freshly named; a virgin name for a new beginning, and it's not like they respond to any name whatsoever anyway! The two beasts were great friends, if not just as aloof as their stereotypes. They exercised with the laser pointer all over the couch, delighted our guests with acrobatics, and generally caused us to smile as soon as we walked in the door after a long day at work.
So as the days started leaving more shade in the deep corners of the garden, we counted our metaphorical chickens and harvested what was offered up by our flora. The rains arrived early this year, watering what we didn't and causing cool weather to stall the ripening of the tomatoes, which Autumn eventually harvested after the new year in a beautifully tart green tomato chutney; best with goat cheese on a cracker, we still have it to this day! Many of the heartier fruits and vegetables we picked with larger success: lots of lemon cucumbers in the central wine barrels, enough that we started pickling them, first with an unsuccessful salt brine, and then with a much more tasty vinegar brine; several decently large pumpkins, which looked gorgeous! and beautifully smooth bright orange skin, making for a delectable pumpkin brie cheesecake for John's birthday, the brie adding some a small and delicate edge to the cheesecake; and then the apples! Both apple trees ("apple sticks") had produced a good number of delicious, crunchy, perfectly tart and acidic apples with flavors that danced on your tongue. We rescued them from the clutches of the jays, and munched on them happily, thinking how easy it is to grow your own apples: a little bit of dirt and a stick, some water and lots of patience, and there you have it! Who wouldn't want to grow their own apples?
We definitely learned some good lessons from this year, and it wasn't just about how many boxes we had to stack on top of the cat's auto-feeder to prevent them from knocking it over. Some foods we had too much of, and some we didn't have nearly enough; although we managed great rotations of lettuces and carrots to continue producing nearly constantly, there was lots of parsley and greek fine-leaf basil, neither of which we use on a regular basis. (And not enough large-leaf basil for pesto!) The muskmelons that we planted in the central wine barrel performed fine, with delightfully small melons that smelled amazing! Like a deep, hearty melon scent, as if it were on the last edge of ripeness before starting the descent into mush. But their flavor was rather bland; a nose so great with nothing to back it up. And squash really need their space; as much as we tried cramming butternut squash into the back rows behind the pumpkins, the only fruit we got was an adorable tiny fist-sized butternut squash; if only it were ten pounds heavier!
Winter finally arrived. Usually a season of traveling, we followed suit this year to Thanksgiving in Maryland with John's parents. John went back a month later for his last Christmas in Maryland; the parents are retiring to Maine very soon. Autumn made a few trips down to her parents in Santa Cruz, and a few off to New York City. And over dinnertime musings and glasses of wine on the patio, we got to talking about how we feel we had started to outgrow the tiny Quail Cottage. Although delightful and quaint, the gardens were small and shaded, the patio large enough for moderate gatherings but no larger, and the house itself with so little space for friends and guests and company from out of town. Was it time to consider moving out of the Cottage, and finding some place better suited to our desires?
So one wet January afternoon, with Autumn back in NYC and our realtor leading his son's boy scouts, John made it by himself to a Sunday open house just a few miles north in a neighboring town. The third house for that day, walking through the house suddenly seemed as fresh as the rain that was gently falling; spacious interior, with modern fixtures, a lovely large kitchen with a hefty stove, a breakfast nook! just like what we're used to, a back patio with well-grown roses and a wisteria trellis, a fig and lemon tree, and a hot tub! Large garage, guest bedroom, huge master bedroom! And the gardens so well trimmed and planted and green! It seemed so well sculpted to have so little room for improvement; how could you stamp your own signature on it? But when Autumn flew back and visited it, she loved it! And in the end, we decided to go for it; Quail Cottage would be moving!
Through inspections and millions of signatures (literally, we signed a paper that said "you agree to sign any papers that we forgot to have you sign") and a pre-planned trip to Mexico just before close, things eventually turned out the way they did and the house was ours. A house! Ours! Crazy! Frantic weeks of packing eventually turned into Moving Day on April 15, enticing our friends with a "celebrate John and Autumn's new tax deduction" day. Boxes were purchased by the bundle-full, color-coded stickers were slapped on everything being moved, and our best friends showed up to bagels and coffee for loading a U-Haul. The move went smoothly (because we have awesome and technically proficient friends), the new garage and office and master bedroom (we now have enough bedrooms to distinguish between "master" and "guest"!) were filled with boxes, and the old bed was assembled in the guest bedroom -- the master is so large that we wanted a larger bed to fill the space! After a long and hot Sunday all fifteen of us movers gathered on the new back deck to celebrate with pizza and beer, and our first champagne cork was popped onto the roof, the first of what will be many bottles, many friends, many parties, and many smiles that we intend to fill the new Quail Cottage Senior with.
Although we part with our old lovely location two blocks away from our favorite downtown, we realized that we spend so much more time having fun with projects, friends, foods and wines, that we truly think we'll be able to grow in this new delightful space. It's still a mess of boxes and unarranged furniture, but we can already see the plans in our heads taking form and creating a few growing spaces here, a lounging area there, and a relaxing oasis from the stresses of the world everywhere in our home. When you're next around, come stop by! Hopefully we'll have a bed ready! (We're still sleeping in the guest bedroom, several months in.) But come say hi, stay a while, relax and enjoy our home, as we ply you with foods and wines and meads from the latest project in the barrel; one of the best reasons we found this new home is for you, our friends and family. Until you visit we'll toast to you in your absence: May the sun shine warmly upon your face, may the wind be always at your back; may the rains fall softly upon your garden, and may the road be forever downhill to *our* door! Sláinte!