week 10/23

Friday Food. March. Meet Jamie Schler.

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  • What you’ll find as you read on:
  • An unrelated note from me (see the Home Page)
  • An introduction to Jamie Schler
  • Links for her cooking, hotel, and books
  • French Onion Soup Recipe
  • Where to find Jamie and all her wonderful food expertise and recipes.

I “met” Jamie Schler in the midst of the pandemic and through the former guy’s administration and our mutual resistance. She offered recipes from her home in Chinon, France and brought her followers along as she went (post-pandemic) to a family reunion stateside. I downloaded her free e-book, Isolation Baking, which along with Chef Jose Andres’ #RecipesForThePeople kept us creatively cooking while “trapped” in our own homes and kitchens. She makes an amazing assortment of homemade jams that she offers as part of her bed and breakfast at her Hotel Diderot in the beautiful Loire Valley. I’m looking forward one day to actually make her French Onion Soup, which is one of my favorite things to eat, and whose recipe I share below.

Jamie is generous with her time and love of food on social media and now on her Substack. She shares her techniques for making jam, which she does in abundance as well as recipes and insights. The jam is one of the highlights of the hotel’s breakfast and jam-making has been a hotel tradition since it’s early days of the 1960s. Each new owner has introduced new varieties of the jams, bringing the total to over 50 kinds.

Jamie Schler in front of her jam cabinet at her hotel, the Hotel Diderot. Her book, Orange Appeal has a prominent place on the cabinet.

The main building of the hotel dates from the 15th century. I can feel the history through the splendid pictures Jamie posts on her social media.

Hotel Diderot (from their website)
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Stagecoach Mary

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Stagecoach Mary (Mary Fields of Cascade, Montana)
Public Domain

Stagecoach Mary was a mail carrier on a star route between Cascade, Montana to St. Peter’s Mission. She held two four year contracts with the United States Postal Service beginning in 1895, and received her stagecoach that she drove to deliver the mail from her friend, the Mother Superior of an  Ursuline Convent, originally in Ohio, but now missioning in Montana.

I should also mention that she was the first African American woman to carry the mail (only the second woman to do so) and in her time she became a Wild West legend.

Sounds intriguing, doesn’t it?

Mary Fields was born in 1832, most likely in Tennessee, into slavery.

As times change, so does language. Since I’ve been in school and up until recently, we’ve referred to the “slaves” in the South (or elsewhere in the world). This denies the people their humanity. It tells the reader/listener that their only value was as a slave; that they are slaves at the heart of their being. But of course, that’s not true. They are people first. Men, women, and children who were kidnapped and enslaved and their children born into slavery and enslaved. These two links should help with the explanation:

Writing About Slavery: This Might Help

This column from the Chicago Tribune: Language Matters: The Shift from ‘slave’ to ‘enslaved person’ may be difficult, but it’s important.

She was freed with other enslaved people after the Civil War. From that time, she worked as a servant and laundrywoman on riverboats up and down the Mississippi River. She worked for the Dunne family until the wife died. John Dunne sent her to live with his sister, a nun and Mother Superior of a convent, where Mary lived and worked. She became very close with Mother Mary Amadeus Dunne and after Mother moved to Montana to mission with the Jesuits, Mary eventually followed her and helped nurse her back to health.

As if that wasn’t enough, Mary Fields wore men’s clothing, drank, smoked cigars, shot guns. She was tough and intimidating, two traits needed to be an independent contractor working alone on the frontier.

At some point, the bishop barred her from the convent after an altercation with a co-worker/colleague involving guns. To be fair, I can’t imagine that it would have been palatable for a man to be answering to a woman, an African-American woman and that may have played into some of the friction between them. Of course, it can be hard for any two headstrong people to work together.

It was then that she contracted with the Postal Service to become a star route carrier. She drove her stagecoach on the route with horses and a mule named Moses.

Star Routes were named such after their motto/mission of Celerity, Certainty, and Security in delivering the mail. They were denoted on paper with three asterisks: * * *, thereby becoming “star” routes. This name was renamed Highway Contract Routes in 1970.

She retired from her role as a mail carrier when she was 71 and lived on in town becoming one of the more popular figures of Cascade. She was praised for her generosity and kindness, especially to children. When she died in 1914 at 82, her funeral was one of the largest ever seen in the town.

She was very popular – schools closed on her birthday. When an ordinance was passed disallowing women from enjoying the saloons, the mayor exempted her. When her house burned down, volunteers rebuilt it.

Born a slave somewhere in Tennessee, Mary lived to become one of the freest souls ever to draw a breath, or a .38.

Gary Cooper, Montana native, writing for Ebony in 1959

The Best of Me

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When my daughter came along, she was a welcome addition – an unexpected surprise, but welcome, nonetheless. She spent her nine months in womb quietly biding her time; an easy pregnancy during a stressful time, letting her older, soon to be middle brother enjoy his limited babyhood at ten to fifteen months old before she came into our world. Little did he know how his young life would change. Even now, seventeen years later, they continue to have a love-hate relationship.

She was scheduled to be born the first week of January and the c-section was planned owing to the previous two c-sections in my life, but she gave us an inkling to her personality the night when I was in the hospital Christmas Eve trying to convince her and the hospital staff to let her wait a week.

It was a dance we would have with this beautiful, thoughtful, independent, non-conforming girl-child often and we should have known from this unforeseen side-trip to the hospital where she would ultimately be born just shy of two weeks later.

There was one other week where we didn’t feel her moving and went in for an ultrasound prior to this. She was fine. Clearly, she was testing us. She was saving up her energy. You really do need to watch out for the quiet ones.

After she was born, we should have known her devious ways when she was quickly sleeping through the night. Little did we know.

We soon learned that when she wanted something, she wanted it then, that minute or there would be consequences. She did call us with her crying like any other baby, but if we were delayed for whatever reason (I mean we still had a toddler who needed attention, plus all the other household chores and the like), she would take care of business on her own. Her life was too exceptional to waste waiting.

Most babies would cry louder or throw things from the crib. Nope. Not her.

We’d (I’d) ask her to wait a minute, just trying to catch my breath, and the next thing I knew she was standing/kneeling/crawling right in front of me. Yup, that little girl had climbed out of her crib. Once she could stand, she could climb.

She’d appear before us, sans diaper, new diaper in hand, with a look that was not to be trifled with.

I once had a cable rep on the phone ask if everything was all right when he heard her screeching her displeasure. She was on the second floor of the house, in a room with the door closed. I was in the kitchen as far away from the stairs as I could be. We lovingly nicknamed her banshee.

I went into the kitchen on an unusually quiet day to find her trying to get something off the top of the fridge. Most children her age might have gotten a chair and climbed up, reaching, perhaps whining, but not my darling daughter. She had a chair, yes, but on top of the chair was a step stool, a cardboard box, a lunch box sized plastic bin, and her at the top of this precarious perch, reaching for the teddy grahams on the fridge. She looked down at me, oblivious to her instability, grinning that grin. She was grabbed one handed around her waist, terror in my voice, laughter in hers.

As the kids got older and moved into their own rooms, we knew that she could never move to the first floor. Who knows where she’d end up. Even being on the second floor, her windows were checked and secured each night. What she’d get up to, no one could predict. There’s curious and then there’s my adored and adorable girl.

She has remained curious and questioning as well as obstinate and stubborn, all good characteristics to complement her independence. She’s her own counsel, but still asks questions and does her best to already have the answers. There is still so much learning that she needs to do, as do we all, and I know she’ll lead herself down new roads and paths that take her forward, but also upside down and around to fill her personality, but also to expand herself and teach others that they too can be great.

But not as great as her. A healthy dose of self-esteem is a gift, and she has it in abundance.

I’m glad I decided to celebrate my independent, self-motivated, and determined baby, who’s not so much a baby anymore on this International Women’s Day. She is not only the future of the world, but also its present, and using the homonym she is a present, a gift to me and everyone she meets.

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March. Inspire?

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The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.

Coco Chanel

One thing about dates on the calendar is that the days change. I’ve been thinking that today is the National Day of Unplugging, but it turns out that it was this past Friday. Rather than being set on March 6th, it seems to be actually on the first Friday in March. It doesn’t really change the topic for today for me since my whole point in bringing up this National Day of Unplugging is to disavow it and suggest that perhaps unplugging isn’t right for everyone.

There is no firm one thing that works for everyone. We are all different and we handle our stresses differently. We use different tools to work through the stresses of our days and go about our work and play. Sometimes, that means unplugging for an extended period of time, but being plugged in isn’t necessarily a bad thing for everyone.

I do certainly agree that screen time should be limited for children, but I also think that if older kids and adults of any age get their entertainment from being plugged in, then don’t shame them for it.

During the pandemic, we were told to stay offline since we were spending so much time online with our work and school being on screens constantly. For me, this was not tenable to my contentment or mental health. I use an e-reader for about 90% of my reading. I get my news from Twitter (and now from Spoutible). How is checking Twitter news different from turning on the television and watching the news on that screen? I would rather play Solitaire on my Kindle than with the cards on my table (which by the way has no room for the cards to be laid out). How are podcasts worse than listening to an audiobook? Music videos vs. music audio?

The rule of thumb should definitely be everything in moderation, but guilting someone for enjoying themselves is not okay in my book.

Some of us are also neurodivergent and need the stimulation that comes from the online world and the very real friendships we’ve forged and fostered there.

Today alone, I’ve used either my Kindle of my laptop for the following, and it’s not even noon yet:

  • Checked and answered email – both personal and professional
  • Zoom meeting for Cursillo grouping
  • Rechecked my church website for the date of the Lenten Penance Service to add to my calendar
  • Set up tomorrow’s Zoom for the Scripture Study for the Month of March
  • Balanced my checkbook
  • Read a chapter in Lady Justice by Dahlia Lithwick
  • Posted to Instagram for Bring Your Action Figure To Work Day – go check it out – link’s on the sidebar
  • Did a bit of the research for Friday Food which will publish at the end of this week

I couldn’t have done half of these things without plugging in. No guilt trips welcome here.

Purple chair and ottoman by window, in hotel room, striped throw pillow on seat, side table on the right, dresser with lamp on the left.
My plans to be once I publish this piece.
(c)2023