Fire Water -- Umeshu 2026

A few years ago a friend saw my post about making umeshu and let me know that he had an ume tree and he and his wife do not use the fruit. Last year I hit him up, and this year I returned with some of the finished product and some bags for bringing home this year's crop.

I was a bad girl and didn't get around to cleaning the fruit. In the laundry room they were ripening and more than ripening and smelling delicious and today I finally prepared what was left. Because there is so little fruit I thought about what else I could use to make this year's potion. I considered aquavit, the tipple of my ancestors, and its tasty mix of aromatic seeds and sprigs.  Which led me to thinking about allspice, and my tiny tree from Fastgrowingtrees.com, which I mention a lot, here. I laugh every time I see their commercials, as in "Fast growing? You are kidding". But I love my tree and thanks for the leaves.

I emptied the green waste and looked around the garden, taking some allspice. Then I noticed my Cecile Brunner. Then I remembered my big Cecile Brunner in the back. I wandered. In the back yard I saw very few roses -- it's been windy -- but I gathered a bud and some spent blossoms. Then I plucked some lime leaves from that tree. Back in the front I remembered the tiny strawberries. There were precisely three, but that's fine. And some pineapple sage. Then I took some violets. Invasive. Do not smell. But they're pretty. And a tiny sprig of lavender. 

Here's my little haul.

Finally I remembered our kahili ginger! I've never known whether it is edible, but I looked it up. Turns out it is. I went back outside, cut a stalk down near the root and added it to the mix. Photo from last year's ginger.

And here's the finished umeshu product.

Now we wait.

My hands smell like roses.

You Must Make This Recipe

only once, and then never again.

It's rhubarb season, my people. I don't recall making any rhubarb recipes last year, maybe longer, because it was bumming me out. I could never get the proportions right. My pies were swampy or way to sweet or...I don't know what. They looked nice but didn't have that perfect combination of sweet, tart and perfume-y.

But I got some rhubarb this week and wanted to try something new. I saw this recipe and it was soooo beautiful that I had to try it. I'll let you know how it turns out.

The reason I will never make it again is that it is laborious to prepare. Half hour my ass! Lots of ingredients (several divided, just for fun and confusion). 

Chop the rhubarb in a specific way, then toss it with sugar and cornstarch.

Lay down parchment in a pan

Place the rhubarb in zig zags in the pan. Can't complain about this, because it's the reason I'm baking it.

Zest an orange and squeeze the orange for juice.

Make a caramel with butter, sugar, honey, orange juice.

Sift dry ingredients

Make a batter with eggs, butter, zest, vanilla, dry ingredients and sour cream. Sour cream? pour onto the rhubarb puzzle, and bake.

Perhaps if I'd written out the steps, as above, before embarking on my quest it would have seemed easier.

I used so many utensils:

And it turned out great.

No News Is No News, Genealogically Speaking

I have handed off information and links to my DNA to the researchers. And now I wait. We have a kickoff meeting on June 2nd. In the meantime, I'm thinking about what the first researcher told me over the phone. She needed to take medical leave and couldn't continue working with me, but was able to report back about what she'd found so far.

As I mentioned earlier, she told me that the same man fathered my mom and her brother. But that that man was not related to the families I thought I came from. My grandfather "was either adopted by his parents, or your mother had a long-term relationship with another man who is the father of your mother and your uncle." In our discussion she shared that my bio-grandad had Midwest connections and southern German DNA, unlike the German DNA I have on my mom's mom's side. Instead of the names that are so familiar to me, the names she mentioned as possible connections are completely new and *sometimes* names I've never even heard before. Signs point to Illinois, not Cheyenne or Tucumcari or anywhere in Texas, or even Los Angeles, where these births occurred.

At first I concerned myself with seeing if I could figure out who the mystery bio-grandad might be based on the names that she shared with me. One very common last name was listed alongside my grandad's on a bowling trophy. Maybe Granny got it on with one of Grandaddy's co-workers. So I tried to figure out who that person, listed only by first initial, might have been.

Then I thought about my grandparents' only known connection to Illinois -- an unknown dentist who lived in  Chicago who they also bought jewelry from (random, I know). I looked at directories of Los Angeles dentists with the names the genealogist provided. And then I forked over more money to Ancestry to have other people figure this out.

In the meantime I couldn't stop thinking about Chicago. What if the break in my mom's paternal line is farther up, and it really is that my grandfather was adopted. Did the orphan trains come through Cheyenne? Turns out that they did.

I'll probably hammer away at this more until June 2nd.

News of Norway

Is it me? Is it Norway?

It's probably a bit of both.

Happy Saturday! I'm reading the English language translation of Bergens Tidende, the local newspaper and finding all of the weird parts. There's an opinion piece about some new development on a spit of land that's about half a mile from the place where my grandmother was born. The author seems miffed that the developer is mimicking the shape and color of historic buildings. Around here, ersatz historic buildings are considered somewhat sensitive to the local aesthetic. I used to call them Fictorians, but I've gotten used to them.

Anyhoo -- I'm reading the article and minding my own business, navigating the ads for athletic shoes that keep popping up, when I see it:

I write to my friend and ask "Is this a Norwegian idiom?" I mean, I get it but who expects to read the words "butt" and "taste" in the same sentence over their morning coffee. I told mrguy and he says it is now his favorite saying and will use it all the time.

Then I'm reading an article with the headline "They were waiting to die. Then came the miracle drug." As the wife of a man with a terminal illness, I am drawn to miracle cures of a Western medicine sort. The story starts out as one of testicular cancer in Norway, which in the 1970s metastasized rapidly in patients. Then there was nothing that could be done to help. Then a scientist discovered that bacteria stopped dividing when current was run through it using platinum electrodes. It was the platinum, which was spreading platinum compounds into the bacteria solution. They tested the platinum stuff on animals and people. So was born Cisplatin. Men with testicular cancer were saved by this treatment. My man, also, has been saved by this treatment. Also, if he ever had ball cancer, he's probably cured of that.

Also, this is the only article I've ever read in which a cancer doctor advises a patient to continue smoking.