Spring Fever

In case you haven't been able to tell, I am in favor of opening the treasure chest of civilization and taking out and admiring the gold circlets, silver studs, and precious beads cached therein. Even at the risk of turning up a cliché (or two).

Our entire heritage hangs in the balance. Will the digital information age lock away knowledge that we can then unlock at any time, if only we know what to look for? Or will it make green our past, so that new and wonderful things can leaf and blossom from it as they have since its beginning? I don't know.

Consider this most beautiful description of love in the spring.

Song of Solomon, Chapter 2

10 My beloved spoke, and said unto me: 'Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.

11 For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;

12 The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing is come, and the voice of the turtle[dove] is heard in our land;

13 The fig-tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines in blossom give forth their fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

Note that I have emended turtle to turtledove in chapter 2, verse 12. I happen to know that, even though I unfortunately do not read ancient Hebrew,  the word for turtle should read turtledove. How do I know this? I cannot remember and have not been able to find out, in a rather summary search of the King James Bible (1611), the Revised Standard Version (1901), the English Standard Version (1971), the Living Bible (also 1971), and the Oxford Annotated Bible (1973), from which I learned so much about textual criticism.

I already know that my next post will (or maybe, given my changeable nature, I should say may) be headed "Spring Training." Which, for the record, I thought of before I knew that Major-League baseball announcer Ernie Harwell (1918-2010) opened the first Detroit Tigers Grapefruit-League game of the season by reciting the Song of Solomon, 2:12. He always said "turtle."

Spring Cleaning

In the opening scene of Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows, the Mole has "been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home."

And I imagine that, ever since we gave up a nomadic life, we, like the Mole, reach a point where we must clear out the last of winter and welcome spring by opening doors and windows and cleaning
"[f]irst with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs . . . ." The Mole even gets out his whitewashing brush to freshen up his walls.

As the Mole cleans, he feels rather than observes "Spring . . . moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing." Grahame captures the heart of the matter: When the seasons turn, winter to spring, summer to fall, the Mole and the rest of us feel uneasy about the change but know that we have our own part in it.

Small wonder, then, that the Mole "suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said 'Bother!' and 'O blow!' and also 'Hang spring-cleaning!' and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat."

The Mole knows, just as we know, that we are happier experiencing spring than doing the spring cleaning. So I'm with him when his snout comes out into the sunlight and he finds himself "rolling in the warm grass of a great meadow."

Dream Gingerbread

One of my favorite books is Victorian Cakes, by Caroline B. King (Boston: Addison Wesley Publishing Company, 1988), a food writer's memoir of her childhood in a well-to-do household in 1880's Chicago.

I can't find my copy of the book right now, but, if memory serves, one of the chapters is entitled, "Dream Gingerbread." According to family lore, one of Caroline's aunts or great-aunts had a dream in which a gingerbread recipe came to her; she rose and baked the cake that very night. The cake was wonderful.

I feel obliged to remark that mine is an elderly memory and does not, in fact, always serve. Lately, I got near the end of a spy thriller when I realized that I had read it before, the first time as a stand-alone and not the fourth in a series.

In any case, please let me give you my recipe for Dream Chocolate Sauce, which came to me a few years ago and is, if I do say so myself, quite wonderful.

Dream Chocolate Sauce

1/2 cup butter, unsalted preferred.

(I can manage to choke down the sauce I made yesterday with salted butter, however.)

12-oz. bag Nestle's Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips.

(Mea culpa. I know my taste in chocolate should be more sophisticated, but I crave the chocolates of my childhood, Nestle's Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips and Hershey's Milk Chocolate with Almonds, henceforth with no apology.)

1/2 cup heavy whipping cream, organic preferred.

In a medium saucepan over warm or very low heat, combine butter and chocolate chips, stirring occasionally until they are melted together. Add the cream and stir in; warm briefly. Serve over ice cream or sneak a spoonful when you are alone in the kitchen.

Hmm. Let's see. I am not a recipe writer, but I would say this makes about a cup and a half of sauce.

Gently rewarm the sauce for each use. You can heat the container of sauce in the microwave for 10 to 30 seconds, for starters, or you can warm it in a saucepan with some water around it over low heat, very slowly.

If you walk away and forget what you are doing, as I often do, you may notice that, when some of the liquid evaporates, the sauce crinkles when it comes into contact with cold ice cream. I haven't fooled around with the ingredients enough yet to make it happen reliably, but that is good too.