When the Moon is Low

by  Nadia Nashimi 

Reading about the lives of people struggling to survive the oppression of fundamentalist regimes can knock the wind out of us.  We who are sitting in our chairs reading about what it takes to flee, to survive, to live in constant fear of being sent back, to be without food, money or shelter, are when in the hands of the proper author, there too.

When the Moon is Low is the story of Fereiba and her family in Afghanistan just before and just as the Taliban take over.  It is the story of her arranged marriage to Mahmoud who she learns to love as much as he loves her.  It is the story of that life cut apart when the Taliban target and murder Mahmoud.  And it is the story of what it takes to have the courage to survive at all costs.

Fereiba flees with her teen-age son Saleem, her daughter and sickly infant son through Iran and into Europe on her way to England.  The young family is helped along the way by people who understand suffering and hope in the same breath.   But when Saleem is separated  from the family it becomes two stories.  Fareiba’s  journey to England and her eternal hope for Saleem.  And it is now Saleem’s story as an Afghan refugee  wandering on his own, making his own way relentlessly through the cities of Europe to get to his family.  

There are many thousands of people in this world fleeing to another place, escaping their homeland for the chance to live at all.  We hear nightly about borders being patrolled,  fences being built, over filled boats overturning,  refugee camps, and all I could think of while reading this in the comfort of my chair was, “could I do it?”

 (advance copy provided by Above the Treeline)

My kind of month

What kind of cook are you?  Do you follow a recipe to the letter or do you improvise and change things around or do you fly by the seat of your pants and toss things together?   I'm a little of all three.  When I started making ice cream I followed the original recipe to the letter the first time just to see how it acted.  After that I improvised.  In general savory cooking I fly by the seat of my pants.  I think if you cook enough you can taste a recipe when you read it and then you can tell if improvising will work.

Today is the first day of National Ice Cream Month.  What?! Why didn't they just make it National Denice Month?  I do keep the dairy business in the black when it comes to ice cream.

This morning I decided to use a few more of those sweet cherries and make some ice cream.  I haven't made any ice cream yet this summer, another indication life around here is not normal right now.

 This is where the improvising comes in.  I found this blueberry ice cream recipe and love it.  It doesn't use eggs so it doesn't have a custard base.  You can see I make notes as I improvise. You can see this recipe makes two quarts, well my ice cream maker is one quart capacity and after that first time, I made a note to halve the recipe.  You can see I also made it with peaches and the sticky note shows when I experimented with making apple butter ice cream in the fall.  THAT was luscious.  What I was doing was trying to continue using this recipe that doesn't use eggs.  I sometimes have trouble with the texture of the custard based ice creams but this one tastes so fresh and it's so easy it's almost my 'go to.'

 I pitted more cherries and ground the first cup fine and left the second cup chopped in chunks.

 After the cherries and sugar cooked and cooled I mixed in the milks.  Here's another place I improvise.  We don't use whole milk.  There wasn't much milk this morning but I had some half and half and heavy whipping cream in the fridge in anticipation of this day.  So instead of using whole milk I used half and half where it called for it and half and half where it called for whole milk. I mean what's it going to do, make the ice cream richer???? 

In homage to Friend Laurie, at the last of the churning I added chunked dark chocolate.  There is nothing that is not improved with the addition of chocolate.

Happy Ice Cream Month!