October at Katydid Cottage

Packing to go back to Charleston and other thoughts

The foliage! The reds, golds and yellows are glorious, despite the drizzle.

October and rain

The Katydid season begins with this simple act, and it ends with it,  the putting in and taking out of the air conditioner and its silent fanfare signaling the beginning and ending of the season. 

Yesterday was Sunday, October 6th, and it was an “endings” kind of day. First, my two neighbors and now friends, Adam and John, and I went to brunch at Rick’s, a local breakfast/lunch eatery that opens at 7 and closes at 1 p.m. There is usually a wait, but  this morning, tourists were  not among the waiting, and we got a table in fifteen minutes. We talked about our homeowners association monthly fee going up, the upcoming election, Adam’s new Paris apartment, the size of a walk-in closet but close to the Eiffel Tower. Mais oui! And John is leaving in a few days to his winter home in Tennessee, without his late husband, who died last summer, here at the cottages. 

I leave late in the month, working at the art museum until the nineteenth ($240 more dollars!) and doing a good job, (read perfectionist’s version of a good job) storing my things to leave here (read away from mice) and deciding what to bring down to Charleston with me, always a painful, indecisive process. Mostly because I can’t remember what I have left behind in my apartment there: do I have a whisk? The one I bought this summer at Crate and Barrel is a great one. It’s not quite a balloon whisk, but it was the only one the C & B Outlet here had, so I bought it. Ten bucks. No brainer. 

Should I bring it? Who drives 1200 miles with a whisk in the car? I do. Well, I might. As well as with my new Huron juicer, my silver plate silverware, or maybe not — it’s very cottagey and fits here. See how this goes? For item after item, mostly kitchenware. 

Another one: a pan to make my favorite apple sauce, from The Zuni Cafe Cookbook.

[Peel and slice a few apples, put in All-Clad 8” oval pan with handles, which I am calling a gratin pan, even though it isn’t one, technically speaking, bake at 375 degrees for a time, then finish at 500 degrees to dry them out. A pinch of salt, a spritz of sugar if you want (up to a couple teaspoons) and no cinnamon. I didn’t trust my Breville to not blow up at 500 degrees, so mine looks a bit mushy. I’m sure it’s delicious. Judy Rodger’s left us too soon, but left us with her cookbook, a great one to add to your collection).

I wanted a gratin pan, and the only one I could find at Home Goods was a small one, but it was made by All-Clad. Here is the one and only apple recipe you’ll ever need, although there are two others I’ll tell you about later. Why did I need eight pounds of apples? I don’t know! I was chaperoning my grandkids’ apple-picking day in New Gloucester and I had a small Trader Joe’s canvas shopping bag and I kept picking and filling and before you know it, ta-da, eight pounds of Macs, Cartland’s and my biggest coup, Freedom heirlooms. I think I’ll leave this one in Maine.

October and Sun

It’s October 16th, and I have turned 71 on the 11th and the rain is gone…thin yellow sun glows in front of my gauzy white curtain. I write. At least my fingertips are tapping on my QUERTY keyboard. I learned to type in high school in 1970, because the girl’s magazine I read (Calling All Girls) said even if you graduate from college, you will be asked in a job interview, “Can you type?”

And that magazine (and others that said the same thing) were right. Every damn job. Even after I had a law degree, though by then, it was a thinly disguised question, because of Women’s Liberation. Men doing the hiring were afraid of Gloria Steinem protesting outside their law firm doors if they had been ratted out for asking a woman with a Juris Doctor degree, “But can you type?” The “but” would have been an addendum because it stood for, “I I know you are smart and have a law degree, which means you went through three years of ball-busting from your mostly-male professors and weekends in the stacks studying Contracts, Constitutional Law, Torts and such, but…..can you type?”

Clearly I digress. Whew, thanks for the memories. 

The Zuni Cafe applesauce is in my Breville counter top oven, the only oven I have at Katydid Cottage. Why, you ask. I took the cottage as it was, thinking I would bring in a 24” stove eventually. When you settle in, though, you begin assessing how much square footage you are willing to surrender of your precious 225 square foot space to a stove. Where will the pantry cabinet go? It would have to go back on Facebook Marketplace, where I found it for sale in May. So it goes. 

Speaking of, it’s October 16th and the rain is gone, but the cold has moved in, with a vengeance. We haven’t had an official 32 degree frost….yet…but the weather service has issued a severe frost warning for tonight. In a cottage that has no insulation, has old wood-framed windows and doors with no weather-stripping, the cold has literally moved in to live with me, like a squatter. It spreads itself across the length and breadth of the wood floor, making it feel like I’m walking across a frozen pond just to get more coffee, which, by the time I get across said pond/floor, has gone cold. Again.  Yes, I do have shoes on, little black ballet style flats that I’ve adopted as slippers. No, I can’t put on the thick, woolen socks I just paid $16.95 for, because then the flats won’t fit. Socks or flats with a thin sole? If the space heater gets any closer while I write this, I’ll be sitting on it. That might actually feel wonderful. This is a desperate plea for a mini-split.

And don’t get me going on a mini-split: I have had 2 quotes by qualified electricians. One was for $6000 and the other was for $5000. The latter just lowered his quote to $4200 if he uses an off-brand. At age 71, do I want the Birkin bag or do I want the knock off? That was rhetorical, in case you need instruction. At an age where you just hope you wake up the next morning, you are trying, or I am trying to give myself the very best of anything. I actually didn’t know what a Birkin bag was until my financial advisor said, “Kate, I don’t hear you saying you need to go to Paris to buy a Birkin bag, so go to Paris.” He knows I’ll probably dine on a Demi-baguette and a hunk of Brie for my daily dejeuner to save money. Birkin, schmirkin. But I’ll give the off-brand mini-split some more consideration. 

Meantime, it’s 9 a.m and the sun and the Envi wall heater and the Pelonis space heater that Rick Schnitzel, a long-ago carpenter we hired to renovate a garage into a studio, left when he finished the job, have warmed me sufficiently to think about bundling up and taking a walk on Ogunquit Beach. I said “think about it.” I could find any number of excuses not to do that. 1. Cold, 2. Online class on the medicinal benefits of Calendula extract (this is true), 3. Online class on Aromatherapy (true also), 4. Online class about sketching and watercolor that I have had up on my Chrome bar for months, oh, then there is the organizing and packing…. Ten days to go until Departure Day. 

Now where is that whisk?