The Geranium Farm came out of the Reverend Barbara Crafton's imagination, as did 'eMos,' her almost-daily electronic meditations sent to readers around the world.
She began to write eMos in the spring of 2001 as a way to provide her parishioners with a meditation they could use in their daily prayer. They spread quickly, and by the time she retired from parish ministry at the beginning of 2002, there were almost 1,000 recipients.
Today, 'Geranium Farmers,' members of her Geranium Farm online community, number in the tens of thousands. As these 'Farmers' began sharing recipes with each other via the email list and the Geranium Farm website ( www.geraniumfarm.org), the idea for The Geranium Farm Cookbook was born.
The book is divided into four very unequal sections: desserts; main dishes; appetizers; and bread, breakfast, and brunch. Because Crafton devoutly believes in the 'life is short-eat dessert first' school of theology, the desserts section is first and longest. Each recipe in the book includes a description of how the recipe came to be part of the Farmer's family or what traditions surround its use. Each of the main dish recipes has a wine suggestion accompanying it, recommended by Christopher Dole, the executive chef at Sunset on Main, a noted restaurant in Waynesville, North Carolina, in the heart of the Smoky Mountains. Interspersed among the recipes are meditations by Barbara Crafton on food, cooking, and community.
The Geranium Farm isn't really a farm. It isn't even really a place, although Crafton's purple house is there. As Crafton writes on the Geranium Farm website, 'We're all here on the Geranium Farm together. It's productive-it bears flowers and even fruit. It's ordinary, deceptively so. That's why it's not The Orchid Farm or The Rose Garden.'
'This is not my cookbook,' says Crafton. 'The Geranium Farm Cookbook is a collection of recipes and lore offered by the Geranium Farmers, the 10,000+ members of our worldwide virtual community of spiritual seekers. The main thing about the Geranium Farm is people relating to God and to each other in the best way they know how, and one of the ways human beings have always related socially and spiritually is through great food.'
Here is a sample recipe and text from the book:
Discouraging Cream Puffs
You melt the butter and then you stir in the flour, all at once. Then you break four eggs into this, one at a time, beating furiously each time. The batter gets stiffer and stiffer. It doesn't look like anything that anybody would ever want to eat. It looks like shiny yellow wallpaper paste. Or maybe it looks like latex - yes, I think so. Exactly like latex. Yum.
Still you persevere, because your mother told you that it wouldn't look like anything at this stage and you figure she must have had a reason to say that. You drop it by spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet. Or you form it into finger-length strips on a cookie sheet, and then you're making eclairs. Or you make four large flat circles of the batter on two cookie sheets, and that will be the basis for a torte - or four large flat rectangles. There they sit, in their rows on the metal pan: cold lumps of shiny yellow dough you couldn't pay me to eat.
Whatever, you think, I can always run out to the bakery. You put the pans into the center of a slow oven and hope for the best. It takes forever. You don't open the oven while you're waiting because your mother said not to and she must have had a reason to say that, although you can't ask her what it was because she died years ago. That woman is never here when I need her, you say to yourself. You clean up the disgusting, sticky batter from the saucepan and from the spoon. You put away the bag of flour. Optimistically, you get out some wire racks upon which whatever it is that will emerge from the oven will sit to cool.
At the end of the cooking time, you can look. You roll away the stone from the oven door and look inside. Rows of lovely puffs, high and light and golden and ready to be filled with something wonderful. Or four puffy golden discs or rectangles. What you see in the oven looks nothing at all like what you put in there.
Out and onto the racks to cool completely. If a few dampish filaments of not-quite-cooked dough cling to the inside of a puff when you split it carefully with a sharp, serrated knife, just pull them out and throw them away. That won't happen with the discs or the rectangles - they're thin enough so they always cook through.
There are so many ways in which you can use your puffs: fill them with whipped cream or vanilla cream or with ice cream. Fill them with chocolate mousse. Bury a fresh raspberry in the center of each filled puff. Or surprise people and fill them with deviled ham or crab salad. If you made discs or rectangles, layer them with ice cream or custard into a stack and drizzle melted chocolate over them. Or melted raspberry jam.
Cream puffs are so simple, but they do require faith. You would never continue with them past the first stage if someone you trusted weren't there to tell you not to be discouraged by appearances. Most of us go through an awkward stage ourselves, an era when we so little resemble the beauties we will one day be that only those who love us dearly can make the effort it requires to believe in us.
Discouraging Cream Puffs
½ cup unsalted butter
1½ cup white flour
4 large eggs
Preheat oven to 350°F.
Melt butter in saucepan over medium heat. Watch it carefully so it doesn't brown.
Add flour, all at once, and mix thoroughly over medium heat.
Remove from heat and add eggs, one at a time, beating furiously after each addition. Mixture will thicken as you beat it.
Drop 3 inches apart onto ungreased baking sheet and bake for 25 minutes or until golden brown. Don't peek before 25 minutes. My mother said.
Makes 2 dozen small or 18 larger puffs. Or 4 4-inch disks or rectangles.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Barbara Cawthorne Crafton is an Episcopal priest, spiritual director, and author. She was rector of St. Clement's Church in Manhattan's Theatre District. She was also a chaplain on the waterfront of New York, and served both historic Trinity Church, Wall Street, and St. John's Church in Greenwich Village. She was a chaplain at Ground Zero during the recovery effort after the September 11, 2001, World Trade Center attack.
An actress, director, and producer, she has worked for many years in combining the lively arts and the life of faith. Her books, articles, and radio scripts have won many awards, including numerous Polly Bond Awards from Episcopal Communicators and the coveted Gabriel Award for religious broadcasting. She is seen frequently on television both as a preacher and as a commentator on Hallmark's 'New Morning' and 'America at Worship,' and has been profiled extensively in electronic and print media throughout the world. Crafton's other Church Publishing titles are Yes! We'll Gather at the River!, The Almost Daily eMOs: Mostly Reverent emails from 'Mo' Barbara Cawthorne Crafton,, and From The Geranium Farm: A Second Crop of Daily eMails from Barbara Cawthorne Crafton.
Barbara Crafton is married to Richard Quaintance, sometimes better known simply as 'Q', a professor of English literature. She has two children and two grandchildren. She lives in New Jersey and travels throughout the country as a retreat leader and speaker.
The Geranium Farm Cookbook Information:
Available June 2006
Church Publishing - (800) 242-1918
9.2' x 7.4'
Paperback - 144 pp - $18.00
