FFwD Tourteau de Chevre

I made this Tourteau de Chevre Thursday night, after Zumba. After making the tart dough Wednesday night, but not the complete cake, I was pretty much cramming the recipe in for this week's FFwD.

I was also cramming in a phone call to my Grandma, to wish her a happy 89th birthday. So while Grandma and I chatted, I prepped my ingredients, and did everything I could that didn't involve my handmixer. Normally calls with Grandma last about 10 minutes, but she was feeling talkative tonight. We rambled from one topic to another in conversation. Then she mentioned casually that she'd recently attended the 90th birthday for her milkman, and that he had picked up their milk for them all the years. The conversation caught in my brain. "Grandma, how many years did you have cows?" I asked. "Oh, well, from the time we got married until 1978, so a long time." Wow. "That was normal back then, right? For people to farm lots of different things?" "Oh yeah, everyone had cows then. Not like now. Now most people don't have cows." My grandparents had retired from cows, pigs, and plants by the time I was born, leaving only a few chickens. It is so hard for me to think about that nowadays, because my point of reference is that people have a dairy farm, or a chicken farm, but not everything all together on a small scale the way it used to be. And I said to my grandma "Things sure have changed, huh?" My original intention with the comment was that now milk comes from dairy farms with hundreds of cows, and nothing but cows. But the minute the words left my mouth, I realized they took on a larger meaning, about how farming hasn't just changed, but life has changed across generations. My mother moved from the farm to the suburbs, with its manicured lawns and perfectly spaced plots of land. I moved from the suburbs to the city, with its quirky and independent thinkers. There are a decent number of families in my area who do some urban cultivating: honey, chickens, gardens that take up the whole yard. But no matter how many chickens my neighbors have, my life will never circle back to the life my grandma lived. I doubt my grandma ever imagined the life her daughter would lead in the suburbs, just as my mom sometimes struggles to understand the life I've chosen. But no matter how far we've come, how different our lives are, we have lots of love for each other.

So a few days early, I'll say Happy Mother's Day to all the moms and grandmas out there. I'll be celebrating with mine on Sunday. And to my grandma, happy birthday. On your birthday, a few hours after our phone call, I toasted you in my kitchen, with my Tourteau de Chevre. It tasted like what would happen if cheesecake and angel food cake had a baby. And the main ingredient was honey chevre (from Trader Joes!), a product from bees and goats, two things you never had to care for on your farm.

Please check out the other bloggers on FFwD, and again Happy Mother's Day!