Category Archives: Miscellany

Hungry reading

Posted on by
Reply

I just started reading a book of food writing, and all I can think about is food. I’ve only an introduction and one essay into The Reporter’s Kitchen, by Jane Kramer, and already I’ve made chicken salad, am planning dinner, and have borrowed two cookbooks from my library (thank you, Hoopla!).

Kramer is The New Yorker‘s European correspondent, but what’s important here is that she also has written about food over the years. The Reporter’s Kitchen is a compilation of those essays. I read The New Yorker only irregularly and wasn’t familiar with Kramer’s writing before this book caught my eye at the library (you know, back in the day when libraries were buildings you could walk into). So far I’m a fan. Even Kramer’s introductory essay had me starting to think about ingredients in my kitchen, and that might be the best response possible to food writing.

Tonight’s menu will take shape around some sort of pasta with tomatoes, kalamata olives, and probably green beans. I’m thinking about sautéed spinach on the side, and I also have an urge to bake. That’s as far as I’ve gotten.

Ground to table

I’m looking forward to a summer and fall filled with great cooking made possible by garden-fresh ingredients from the brand-spankin-new raised bed my husband just built for me. It’s 16 feet long and will hold everything from tomatoes and beans to cabbage and kalettes (aka kale sprouts). We took delivery of 4 cubic feet of soil this week and have spent the last three days moving it wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow into its new wood-framed home. I’m tired and a bit sore, but oh so happy I could write a poem.

Mineral-black soil,
Fertile, dark promise rich with
possibility

Or something like that. I’m reading a lot of poetry while sheltering in place, particularly after treating myself to a birthday purchase of books delivered direct to my door not by Amazon but by the distributor(s) for my local independent bookstore, which is able to continue bringing in income with this service while not able to open its doors. My order included three books of poetry, and I’m making my way through them slowly, savoring and re-reading.

My current obsession is The Madness Vase, by Andrea Gibson, one of my favorite poets. These poems are powerfully strong, anthems of survival shot through with vulnerability. They celebrate life without ever pulling punches, and I can’t get enough of them. That has been pretty much the case for me with every book of Gibson’s poetry I’ve ever picked up, and if you’ve never read any … well, I think you’re missing out.

I’ve seen Gibson in performance as well, and they’re equally powerful on stage. Here’s a collection of videos of their performances—don’t miss.

Non-fiction for the birds

Also included in my bookstore purchase was an enormous hardcover book, What It’s Like to Be a Bird, by David Allen Sibley. This one, too, is a joy, not meant to be read cover to cover but intended rather for wanderlust reading, choosing your own topic and following it wherever it takes you.

One place It took me was to my drawing pad, after reading about wings inspired to draw feathers of all varieties. I sense years of enjoyment ahead of me from this book, reading and re-reading, learning about different aspects of birds’ lives, reminding myself how and why they fascinate me.

Spring is a good time for reading about birds, when I also can sit on my front porch or back deck and watch them in the trees and at the feeders. That’s where I’m headed now, probably with a book.

The industrious wren

Posted on by
Reply

I started my Sunday with a wren warbling and dancing in the forsythia outside my living room window. It was my second wren sighting of the spring, and I’m pleased to know they’re in the neighborhood. They’re not uncommon here, but I don’t see them every year. I’ve set out wren houses more than once, and I once scored a nest, but it wasn’t the nest momma ultimately picked for her brood, so we didn’t get any tenants.

I wondered what symbolism attaches to the wren, and it seems to depend whom you ask. One Native American totem website associates it with confidence, energy, and gusto for life. Another tells me it doesn’t have much meaning in most Native American cultures but is, in some, a bird of war and believed to boost courage. The Celts apparently associated it with the old year coming to an end, and for that reason, more than one website (including the Smithsonian magazine’s) says the Irish traditionally hunted it on the day after Christmas.

Well, I don’t want to kill wrens. So I chose to associate them with industriousness and gusto, and took my wren sighting as a sign that I should get something done during the day. Amazingly, that’s what I did. By day’s end, my garden and yard were all tidied up for spring: birdbaths in place, fountains spouting, patio swept, yard debris collected, a second round of spring seeds planted, and seedlings starting to think about sprouting in my portable greenhouse. We exhausted the dogs by spending the day outside and giving them a walk. And I finally did the craft project I’ve been planning for two years, which has haunted me since the start of sheltering in place.

We sat outside for a lovely video call with the faraway son, and I saw my wren again, along with a woodpecker and other critters both winged and earthbound. I’m not sure what symbolic meaning attaches to woodpeckers—maybe industrious or mischievous? Leaving now to go look that up.

P.S.

I still haven’t looked up the woodpecker symbolism, but I did challenge myself to draw my sweet little wren, which is why this post is delayed. Here he is in black and white also.

Cooking in the pandemic

Posted on by
Reply

Creativity comes in many forms. My primary—and professional—medium is words. But food is a close second that brings me a lot of pleasure.

I haven’t had much time to cook while sheltering at home, mostly because I’m fortunate enough to be able to work from home and my job is one whose demands have ramped up significantly in the pandemic. But occasionally I get a cooking urge when I actually have time to explore it.

Yesterday was one of those days. So I looked in the freezer, found some ground turkey that needed to be used, and went recipe hunting. The result: turkey meatballs seasoned with cardamom and orange, served over a bed of cabbage and brown rice, with grape tomatoes on the side.

My first pie ever with a butter crust

I started with this recipe and played with the seasonings a bit, substituting a smaller quantity of mace for the nutmeg in the meatballs and adding turmeric and ancho peppers. I also added turmeric and ancho to the sauce, along with a lemon-garlic seasoning that gets a lot of use in my kitchen. I didn’t alter the cabbage at all, except to skip the salt and use a slightly citrusy pepper blend instead of plain pepper.

It was tasty, and the cabbage is an absolute keeper, especially mixed with rice as in this recipe.

Dessert was peach pie I made the night before, and the weather cooperated so we could eat outside. Heaven.

Intermittent coping

Posted on by
Reply

Last time I was here was almost two all weeks ago, and I see that I was in a funk. There’s a surprise, eh?

Life is all ups and downs these days. Only two things surprise me about finding that I was blue the last time I wrote here:

  • That I managed to write at all while in a funk
  • How long the funk lasted (well over a week)

In any case, I’m back, and in a better mood. I think we’re all having ups and downs, better times and worse. Here in the Midwest, the weather matches the mood. It was clearly spring a week ago, sunny and warm. Now it has snowed three of the last four days. Not snow that sticks, thankfully, but snow. I actually woke this morning to news of a multi-car pile-up on one of the local expressways. It felt like I was in a time warp.

Today’s snow was thick and heavy and fluffy, very pretty and perfect for building snowmen though it didn’t stick around. It was nearly gone by early afternoon. Yesterday’s was light but hung around a little longer, though it never accumulated on streets. Different days, different snow, different moods.

Today’s mood started out as a cooking one, and I pulled out a couple of my lesser-used cookbooks to inspire a marvelous dinner. Then I looked in the freezer to see what ingredients I could work with and found so much food, already cooked, that I’m now banned from buying anything but produce and fresh dairy products for the near future.

I did manage to turn my personal yen to cook into an assignment for my husband to bake bread. So tonight’s menu is for Finnish cardamom bread and a lovely kale and lima bean soup I made some time back. I will bake a pie, both to feed my creative cooking urge and to use peaches from the freezer.

Does anyone else’s life feel a bit random these days? I wake up wanting to cook and instead write a blog post. I plan my garden and order seeds but have only started a handful in soil since they arrived. The first craft project I planned to undertake during social distancing is still waiting for me, the supplies I thought I had on hand having actually just recently arrived.

It’s all topsy turvy. I’ve actually come to appreciate cold and rainy weather because it keeps more people inside. And I take my longest and most relaxing walks at night, when fewer people are out and about.

Perhaps even stranger, I’ve had trouble reading anything but poetry. This has significantly increased the amount of poetry I read, but at the cost of a certain escape that I typically find in prose. I think I found a solution, though, in young adult literature. I wrote about that over on Escape into Life, in the column I’ve started calling “Accidental Coping.”

One thing I’m grateful for everyday, though, is the extra time I have with Old Dog, the 14-year-old cardiac patient who spends nearly every waking moment wherever I am. She sleeps behind me while I work, paws at me to join her when her day’s rest is over and she wants a walk, and lies at my feet when I’m on Zoom or FaceTime calls with loved ones. I don’t know how much time she has left, and I’m happy for every minute of it.

Blue funk with yellow

Posted on by
Reply

My forsythia is in bloom, along with one daffodil, and the four yellow crocus that got moved from my back garden to the front parkway and somehow haven’t yet wilted. Today’s garden is all yellow.

I can’t extract any hidden meaning from that, just a coincidence. And while I try to plan variety into my garden, it’s just a fact that an abundance of spring blooms are yellow. “Why that is” is a rabbit hole I might slide down in a minute or two, but for now I’m content to enjoy these scattered bits of color and the insistent calling of a robin to my left and a cardinal to my right as I sit on my front porch.

It’s only about 40 degrees F, and there’s not much world passing by right now—an occasional walker or bicyclist, sometimes a car at the intersection a block away. The neighborhood isn’t just social distancing today; it’s mostly huddled inside trying to stay warm. I did that this morning and found myself headed toward a blue funk, so we grabbed the dog leashes and got outside. Pups exhausted, we now sit quietly on the porch, reviving our spirits and lungs with fresh air.

Yesterday was warm enough (low 60s?) to open up the windows and let fresh air into the house, which is a spring treat. I often crack open a bedroom window at night even in early and late winter, but being able to open the windows wide and let in a breeze is a blessing after a long winter—perhaps even more so now that I’m working from home and don’t get as much fresh air in the morning and afternoon.

These are all small condolences, of course, and I would trade them all—the enjoyment of them, anyway—to have this horrible disease go away and know that my loved ones and I and total strangers the world over could feel safe. I’m seeking out this calm moment because inside I’m a roiling mess of anxiety, and I know that I’m one of the lucky ones. Able to work from home, with the company and care of a spouse I love, I owe my comfort and safety to those who’re going out into the world and facing this menace on my behalf. They include family, friends, and strangers, and I worry for them and am angry at a government that has done little to protect them.

Hug the ones you love. Pray for everyone. Try to stay safe.

Baking therapy

Posted on by
1

I believe I might have entered the baking stage of coping. When I made my Pi Day pie back on my first day of social distancing, I was carrying out an annual tradition unrelated to our current situation. I would have made that pie in normal times. Granted, my husband and I might not have eaten it all by ourselves, but…

A week or so ago, when I made chicken pot pie for dinner, that also didn’t count. That pie was just a normal dinner. I already had the filling in the freezer, waiting for a crust.

Even when I made cookies last week, they were a treat that didn’t feel like a pattern. Now, I think they might have been the beginning of one. Yesterday I made cheese scones. And with a birthday coming up in our household—and yes, we will have a party!—when I made the grocery list that included evaporated milk and coconut for German chocolate cake frosting, I told my husband at the last minute to get extra evaporated milk so I’d have the makings for macaroons.

There are two of us in this household, and I don’t think sharing baked goods with neighbors is an approved social distancing activity (though if you know the answer and it is, please let me know). So that’s a lot of baked goods needing to be consumed. And in my mind, I’m all ready to make more cheese scones the minute the current batch runs out.

This is either stress baking or sublimating. Or are those the same?

Goal setting

I didn’t actually write down goals yesterday, but I did have them in the back of my head throughout the day. I did alright—washed a bit of laundry, made those scones, wrote part of a blog post for Escape into Life—maybe most of one, but it doesn’t feel right yet, so I’m unsure. Also I determined that we don’t seem to have fishing line, which I want for a particular creative project, so now it’s on the same shopping list with the building supplies for the new raised garden bed I’ve been planning since last fall. Today’s goals include one for the husband: order those supplies. Mine look something like this:

  • Dog walk
  • Exercise walk
  • Poetry or other reading
  • Clean towels
  • Stretch goal: Finish that blog post
  • Photo a day, of course

Photo of the day

I’m a day behind in sharing, so here’s one from each of the last two days. In the first, I was focused on the doorway, which intrigued me because of the lighting; the cat was a bonus and maybe my favorite part of the picture.

This one shows Rolo’s newest habit: leaving the ball on the window ledge where she needs it in her mouth as a pacifier when she growls and shakes at other dogs. Apparently she’s grown tired of having to run through the house desperately looking for it when she sees a dog coming.