It’s Your Own Fault You Read It
23
Category Archives: Humor
Blankety-Blank Blankness
When the mind is particularly recalcitrant and thought refuses to bubble to the surface, what am I to do? Why, curse the dis-ease just a little, and then put my brainlessness to work at doing the Nothing it is so fond of doing anyway. I can hope that some sense will accidentally fall into place, but at the least, I’ll have enjoyed myself with a little ridiculous exercise of the inner sort.
I Made It Myself!
Funny, isn’t it, how proud we are of things we think we have accomplished, no matter how silly and shoddy they may turn out to be. As often as not, we are the engineers of our own destruction; whether we stubbornly and hubristically fail along with our ridiculous doings and inventions or not is sometimes a matter of mere luck and circumstantial adventure.
Foodie Tuesday: Meringue Merengue
Egg Separation Anxiety never plagued me much, even if there’s no support group dedicated to its eradication. Mom taught me how to break open an egg delicately enough to slip the yolk from one half-shell to another over a cup or bowl while letting the albumen slide away, keeping the yolk intact and the white pristine enough for a good souffle or meringue. But do I think to do so very often? No, hardly ever. I really do love souffles and meringues, so it’s silly not to do a little egg separating and have a little bit of delicious, fluffy fun once in a while.
Heaven knows that inflated eggwhites are highly trend-friendly these days, anyway. All I have to do is have one little look at any of the menus, Pinterest boards, food blogs, or cookbooks that are current to be instantly engulfed in a vast snowbank of handmade marshmallows, mile-high mousses, and macarons. I think I can safely say that I am so far from being trendy as to have missed out on cutting any edge more exciting than my homely and unvarnished manicure.
Trends are usually overrated, anyway. Beaten eggwhites? Not.
But let’s stop dancing around this and start talking about what separating eggs can do for deliciousness. Less merengue, more meringue!
Kransekake biscuits! The famed Norwegian celebration dessert, a conical construction comprising rings of ground almond meringue that, in my family’s recipe, is made with a fantastic, simple (nuts, egg whites, sugar. Period.) dough to bake up into lovely chewy cookies when broken for eating.
Meringue crusted tarts! Cinnamon crust, apple filling with tawny port. Rose water crust, strawberries in pomegranate curd, topped with candied rose petals and finely chopped pistachios. All sorts of options that imitate but don’t supplant the lovely Pavlova in their magical variety. A lightly sweet, crisp meringue topped or filled with soft fillings of fruit, custards, mousses, and the like makes for a heavenly treat.
And, since it’s holiday time hereabouts, my own variant of île flottante, eggnog with a meringue cap. I kept both very simple this time around: the eggnog being an extremely uncomplicated thin custard made with cream, whole milk, cane sugar, a pinch of salt, a whole vanilla bean, a good grating of fresh nutmeg, and a whole bunch of egg yolks—in this case, the yolks of eight eggs for a combined quart of milk and cream. Warmed to a near-scalding temperature while being whisked continuously, it thickened slightly before going into the refrigerator for further thickening and chilling.
[For those who wish, a nice tot of bourbon, rum, or brandy (or any other liquor or combination of them that you like) can give this dessert-y treat a grownup twist, as long as you’re grownup enough to imbibe intelligently and stay away from dangerous things like cars, cliffs, and ex-spouses*.]
Meanwhile, with the eggnog chilling in the fridge, there’s plenty of time to whip up the eggwhites into sturdy enough peaks to keep their winsome little curlicue tops under the broiler while getting a quick gilding. All I added to the eggwhites while beating them into submission was a big splash of lovely dark maple syrup.
Pour some eggnog into a glass, add liquor if you like, and top with a little party hat of golden-skinned soft meringue, and toast the occasion. And the goodness of eggs, while you’re at it! Cheers!
* Note: Just in case anyone takes me too seriously, I should mention that I have the privilege of being married to a guy who has two genuinely excellent exes, and I consider them both fabulous human beings, so I only have to avoid the aforementioned cars and cliffs, myself. In fact, I’ll happily tip back some tipple with either of my predecessors anytime without fear of anything but conviviality (and possibly, hilarity) happening. It’s all about how the relationships are managed, just as it’s about how we manage our imbibing.
Eldest Child
It isn’t easy being the eldest child. You tend to be expected to carry the world on your shoulders for any kids that come after you. My older sister certainly had her hands (and shoulders) full when it came to the other three of us. Following her lead was the logical thing I expected to do from Day One, and she undoubtedly knew that her every word and act would be scrutinized and grasped as tightly as any life’s-mystery-solving clue could be.
Unlike many, my elder sibling was neither empty-headed nor empty-handed when leading or hauling me through the years, however. I must assume that she was generally more conscious of what she led me toward or away from than I ever was, and whether there was a particular purpose regarding its effect on me or it was simply what she needed to do in her own life was as irrelevant as if I’d been a duckling following a duck, since after all, our parents didn’t go to school with me, play in the yard with me, or otherwise have anything like the minute-to-minute impact a sibling could have. I apologize, here and now, for whatever time and energy I stole away from my big sister that she ought to have been spending on herself alone! Strangely, she still likes me, though, so I take the liberty at the same time of assuming her forgiveness on that front.
I certainly didn’t quit the hero-worshiping dependence when we were young, either. It was my sister who gave me the world. Our parents saw to it that we learned to read, and that is an enormous gift that can only be repaid in kind by handing it on to younger people as they come along, but it was and continues to be my older sister who blazes the path down every library aisle on earth (and a few in the ether, too) and inspired me to try to better my reading and writing. She always had astonishing verbal skills and a voracious appetite for all sorts of books, so she set the benchmark in reading and writing that I will always lag behind but continue to pursue.
If that cracking open of the world in the pages of books weren’t enough, there was always the lure of the tangible world as well. There, too, our parents paved the way for our ventures beyond home borders, both financially and with the encouragement to broaden our horizons beyond anything they were privileged to experience at our young ages. But again, it was at big sister’s beckoning that I took up the challenge given by Mom and Dad to take a semester off from my university studies, spending both the time and the money I’d have devoted to those on traveling Europe, instead, with my sibling. It was more education than I could possibly have crammed into the other three-and-a-half years of my undergraduate studies altogether, utterly worth all of the angst and expense it terrified my twenty-something soul to expend, and all happened under the tutelage of my sister, my intimidatingly fearless guide and hilarious friend.
There’s nothing a sister can say or do to make up for all of the times I was a pain in the neck—or anatomical regions south thereof—to my older sister. Despite her admiration for all things chocolate, no amount of truffles and cakes and French Silk Pies will do. But I am grateful, and I do thank her, and I certainly wish her a wonderful birthday today and many more of them to come. I’ll just have to watch and see what she does in times ahead, so as to get inspired for how to handle the next such conundrum as they always do come along in life. That’s what elder siblings are for, it seems.
Industrious
My nature is just about the polar opposite of industrious. If there were a way to recline and remain immobile and mentally inactive without being in a completely vegetative state while still getting through daily life, I would probably have discovered it by now, but I manage to keep alarmingly close to it in spite of all urgings toward better things.
I have tremendous curiosity about and admiration of those who are, conversely, hard workers and the wonderful machinery that represents and supports them in their labors. But I have never progressed far beyond the stage of admiring these ‘rude mechanicals‘—human and otherwise—in the abstract. To me, they remain alien and magically artistic yet quite incomprehensible. Only when contemplated in the stopped state required for rest, repair, and refueling do they even register in my mind as real.
I will always admire and be immensely grateful for those people who do the work of the world, who keep it chugging on all cylinders and, indeed, invent and craft the machinery that does the chugging. I could not enjoy this life of privileged repose and ignorant ennui if it weren’t for being carried by the very machinations of these titans. I bow at their feet in humble gratitude and respect.
And while I’m down here curtseying, I notice that the floor looks quite comfortable and inviting indeed. If you should need me later, come back and look for me where I’ve stretched out on the rug in a slackly indolent heap. Don’t make too much noise, though, for I may be dreaming happy dreams of gears turning, flywheels whirring, and motors purring, and it would be a shame to interrupt them with actual action.
Lounge Around the Jungle
Image
Postcard from the Edgy
My Mind Wanders & So Shall I
I want to wander
To traipse and travel
Or else I wonder
If I’ll unravel
Make expeditions
I may
I must
Or my brain could bust
From Wanderlust
Let me sally swiftly
Flying forth
No matter whether
South
Or North
For I might implode
In irksome itches
The way my
Passport
Ticks and twitches
Can’t pause to ponder
What’s yon
Or yonder
My heart
Yells START!
And I want
To wander—
Audience of One
Those of us who are artists of any sort are mostly destined for one extreme or another: fame or invisibility. There are a fair number who manage to become something in between, of course, making enough money or garnering enough notoriety with their work to evade complete obscurity, but by virtue of that very existence in between, they too remain generally unknown by the broader world.
I have neither the skills nor the ambition to make myself successful in the business aspects of being an artist, so it’s a virtual lock that I’ll never be rich or famous, let alone both. That means, for me, that to be a success I must focus on working to please an audience of one. Even those who love and support and care about me have no obligation to admire and delight in my artistic output, and they can’t, without a large number of less-connected persons, make me a resounding financial success. My loved ones do seem to like my work, often enough, a fact that defies logic in its own special way, but that still doesn’t make those who adore me, singly or en masse, rich enough to make me rich, even if they sincerely wanted to own passels of my creative output, another reality which would not necessarily represent great intelligence or aesthetic taste on their part, even by my loose standards.
I can and do self-publish, and though that’s clearly an unnecessary and unbusinesslike indulgence, it makes the process of writing and drawing, painting and composing more entertaining for me and less of an invisible feeling enterprise. It doesn’t change the business end of the equation other than endorsing the probability that nobody in his right mind will pay me for things I’m giving away for free anyhow, but it motivates me to do something, anything, more than I might otherwise.
So where does that leave me? Knowing that I am working on my art, first and foremost, to please myself. I am and always will be heartily glad if and when others genuinely share my enjoyment and appreciation of what I consider my share-worthy artistic output. It’s a huge thrill when anyone deigns to spend actual, legitimate, government-recognized currency of virtually any national origin on the purchase of any of that work. But since the latter sort of happenings are rare as hens’ teeth, I will do best to enjoy my sporadic glimpses of small-scale fame when anyone expresses pleasure in my art, and the rest of the time, relish the process of production and any end products of it that I like, all as president, primary cheerleader, and sole permanent member of my own fan club, the way most of us artists are nature-made to be. Is that the sound of one hand clapping I hear, or did somebody just smack me to try to knock some sense into me?
Aging Gracelessly
If I started out without being very lithe and blithe and graceful—just ask my dance teacher from when I was in second grade—there’s little hope I would suddenly have become any more so in the years since unless I had been working assiduously to defeat my cloddish nature. But I haven’t. Your first clue, of course, should be that word “working,” as you all know so perfectly well that I am opposed to, if not utterly incapable of, being a worker bee and exerting energy. That is neither new nor likely to change radically with the passage of further years, in which I will naturally become more ossified and less willing and able to assimilate new knowledge, less flexible and worlds slower in my reflexes.
What I do have in my favor as I age is an ever-growing ego and ever-shrinking ability to be embarrassed by my evident weakness and silliness and fallibility. So as I go skipping my way through yet another birthday, I am not much troubled by my actually achieving this advance in age by, you know, getting older. As it’s always been said, it sure beats the alternative. And there really are a lot of great things about aging and the passage of time that tend to offset the cost.
So don’t mind me if I stumble and fumble around, making quite the fool of myself as usual and hardly managing to avoid absolute implosion. The occasional face plant isn’t nearly so hard to take as not being alive enough to fall on my kisser once in a while. Making plenty of mistakes and missteps keeps me interested in not only how to avoid the same pratfalls the next time or two around but also in how to enjoy the goofy glories of just being an extra in life’s always grand action. And you never know when I might manage a real, if awkward, pirouette or plié before collapsing in creaking and squeaking and laughter. Keep your eyes peeled.
Art-Colored Glasses 