What, were You Born in a Barn?!

Posted on by
36

ink drawingWhy, yes I was, thank you. Well, not literally, but hey, we’re all animals, so if I revert to form occasionally, I can hardly be faulted for it. If I step in something nasty from time to time, chances are pretty good that something is of my own manufacture, I’ll grant you, but there is some comfort in knowing we all do the same, that others are as fallible and foible-filled as I am. Mostly if it appears that anyone gives the appearance of perfection, it’s got more to do with one of two things: either they’re more skilled than average at a quick cover-up, recovery or diversion, or they simply don’t do that much–act, change, live–so they’re just playing the odds for an easier win.graphite drawing

I’ve come to terms, I think, with being my own brand of nature-girl when it comes to just being an ordinary, contented chick-sheep-or-bovine and letting the, ahem, chips fall as they may. Being the human beast means I must tend to mucking out my own stall, and I’m at least responsible enough to attempt that, I hope, but it also means that I don’t have to worry too much about trying to be someone or something excessively sophisticated let alone idealized. Every creature does what comes naturally, and we don’t tend to blame the non-human ones for that, other than the occasional bird targeting our shiny cars with their natural output and such. And I promise never to strafe your precious automobile, if that makes you feel any better.digitally enhanced graphite drawingSo please pardon my tendency towards inadvertently impolite outbursts, my untimely bodily noises, my awkward kinesis and all of that other too-human beastliness, and I’ll overlook yours as best I can, too. Because we are all in this barnyard together, my friends! PS: my computer just reminded me that the word “kinesis” contains the word “kine,” so the very least you can do is not be too critical if in when motion I resemble a cow. Thank you, and farewell for now. If you should need me, I’ll be over here lounging with my hooves in the trough.pastel on black paper

It’s Foodie Tuesday and I Haven’t Eaten Yet

Posted on by
27

When I was an undergraduate, our university operated on a semester basis, and required all lower-classmen to take a course during the Interim month of January. As the courses offered during that period were designed in part as a testing ground for future standard semester courses (‘experimental’), in part as cram-courses for catching up a missed class in compressed time or as courses that otherwise didn’t fit into the typical academic demands of a semester or involved travel, they tended to be highly desirable classes anyway, and I opted to continue my Interim studies during all four years of my undergrad education. It came in very handy in my senior year after I’d taken a whole semester of the previous year to travel in Europe (non-academically, but spending my school funds all the same) and really needed to finish school in 3-1/2 years rather than the full four to compensate.

But the real benefit of the system was that I got to take a delightful course somewhat off the beaten path of my degree each January. One year, it was ‘Chinese Conversation, Culture and Cuisine‘–a supremely entertaining class team-taught by two brilliant New York Jews and their Chinese grad student (the team in itself a refreshment in the midst of a perfectly fine ‘white-bread’ west coast Lutheran uni education). Two days a week, one or the other of our professors would lecture on Chinese history and culture, slipping in lots of anecdotal hijinks from their respective times studying in China; one day was a practicum devoted to classic Chinese cookery, and was needless to say the day of perpetual perfect attendance for and by all in that class, given how hungry undergraduates always are for good food; and one day was spent focusing on the development of Chinese written and spoken languages, with some rudimentary training in making Mandarin-like sounds and practicing the beautiful strokes of character calligraphy to accompany what the sounds should, at least, have meant, though I’ve no doubt that what we actually said translated as something much more in the comical-infant-to-international-crisis-causing range. One of the few things that’s stuck with me for all of the intervening years was learning that the proper greeting was not Howdy or Hey, Baby, but Have you eaten rice today? And of course, that is heart and soul of compassion and hospitality in any culture or language. Would that we all might operate more fully on the basis of that concern.photo + text graphicAll of this wisdom aside, I guess it’s hardly rare for anyone as food-obsessed as I am to generally forget to eat once in a while. Here it is already 18.00 hours and I haven’t eaten more than a handful of pistachios. And those, not recently. Tasty though they were, I imagine I might not be just dreaming that I could enjoy a slightly more substantial repast before long. But sometimes I think a little semi-fasting is not a bad thing, because it may, for example, begin to ameliorate any damage done to my innards, and any, erm, expansive qualities reflecting that internal damage in my out-ards, over certain recent holidays by a slightly over-enthusiastic or exaggerated sense of my capacious personage’s actual dietary needs. Also because, being frank here (though I generally prefer the name Frances/is, should anyone ask), a short period of partial abstemiousness only serves to enhance the pleasures of the simplest foods.

And that’s what I’ll have today: the simplest. A little fridge-cleaning bite while paused from a somewhat overweening stack-up of household chores left too long undone, messes unattended. But I can’t say that I’ve any objections at all to a little truly simple food goodness, so I shall indulge in that momentarily. I’ll leave you with some verses to chew upon until my return on the morrow. Bon appetit! Or as we say in my family, Vær så god. That’s far more appetizing, I’m sure, than what I would have said in Chinese, no matter how good my intentions.photo + text graphicphoto + text graphicphoto + text graphic

Mirrors and Mosaics

Posted on by
20

Self-Portrait in Tessellation

I never see myself but in the smallest part,

all others quite obscured by my beliefs,

incessant shadows of my little griefs

and the convictions of this moment’s heart–

in tiny pieces shaped by this day’s faith,

see this week’s angle; my fragmented soul

seen but in shards, not as a whole:

instead of spirit, as an empty wraith–

I hope that I will someday finally see

this whole chaotic multitude in view,

convened, a coalescent scene anew,

those fine mosaic atoms that are Me

photo

Where do we seek for the patterns of ourselves?

Truthfully, I hope never to get the full view of myself–that seems to me something to be experienced only at the very end of life, and as the old story goes, I’m not eagerly “gettin’ up a busload to go today”. Let’s hope the afterlife can wait for me a goodish bit yet. But it’s sometimes edifying to view myself with a modicum of dispassion, a fair step back from the funhouse mirror where I tend to see myself with automatic criticism, for good or ill, and not with honest clarity and fairness.

Ms. CF, that sage lady over at cfbookchick, posted a marvelous piece that should encourage us all to look inward and see whether we’re not a little overzealous in measuring and judging self and others. As she says, “self doubt is a terrible monster,” and it’s frighteningly easy to be caught up in obsessive condemnation of our own failures or shortcomings as well as those we paint on others. Few truly sharp universal definitions of standards and requirements exist to tell us just who, how or what anyone ought to be, so we tend to invent our own more than we’ll readily admit, and so, being judge and jury by default in our own courts–well, it’s easy to take prisoners and not so easy to ever show quite as much mercy as we should. When is it time to let go of all the old baggage, or at least put it away in long-term storage, and forgive ourselves and others?

digital image

We’re all looking for patterns, for clues . . .

I May be Getting the Hang of It

Tumbling on fifty-one years

Of joy and quiet wonder, fears,

Of curiosity and laughs,

Of writing songs and epitaphs,

I think I’m finding here at last

Direction from each annum past

To lead me forward to explore

At least another fifty more

VBA logo #3

See, whatever the current state of the union-or-disunion in my being, I’m in a mighty happy spot in life these days. Getting my blogging groove on bit by bit and learning along the way. Surrounded by standouts who take me under their measureless wings and fly me around at irresistibly dizzying height just as though I actually belonged there, and are teaching me how to flap my own flimsy excuse for a set of wings. Clumsy I may be, but having a high old time and loving the exhilarating and weird sensation of the familiar earth being transmuted into something quite new, sometimes shocking, and decidedly intriguing. And people keep popping over to my aerie to drop prizes and presents into my humble and shaggy version of a nest. I’m running out of mantel space in the ol’ nest, and getting quite the kick out of the whole thing, thank you very much. Lately I’ve had another set of trophies and treasures conferred upon me by fellow sojourners in the Merry Old Land of Blog to the degree that instead of falling out of the nest in self-abnegation I’m more likely to be overinflated and drift off in my helium-fillled happiness, giving a queenly wave as I float over thanking the Little People who helped me feel like the grand success I am today.

My more honest self, however, weighs it all in the balance and says that I am simply most fortunate to have these new digs in bloggerville and thus be surrounded by such great neighbors–wiser, more experienced, and incredibly generous souls who raise me up to their natural locations in the heights. Today I am especially cognizant of the gifts shared with us all, and me in particular, with me by two fine exemplars of this communal outreach through art and kind critical support.

I am grateful to dear Geraldine, the Alternative Poet, for granting me the Versatile Blogger Award. Her passion for and championing of contemporary poetry that puts up no walls of opacity in front of readers but rather invites us in with magical and graceful turns of phrase able instead to allow us clearer views through an artful and inspired window is a great gift in itself. She shares not only her own lovely work with us but the safe haven in which the rest of us are encouraged to be our best selves in this vein. I am grateful, too, to dear ‘Nessa, who is inclined to open veins while writing from her Stronghold that sometimes seem to me to put her at fearful personal risk, but does so with such mature passion that it’s compelling even when frightening–all the while offering astonishingly tireless words of kindness and endorsement to the rest of us. None have better deserved the designation Liebster [Beloved] in blogging, and yet here she is handing it along to others, including me.

Yes indeedy, I can still see that oddly, eccentrically fragmented and distorted self-image of mine, but I really don’t dislike or fear it anymore. It’s just one part of who I am, more relevant in explaining my exceedingly long and poky version of Overnight Success than anything frightfully du jour, so I’ll just let it hang around there, cracked mirror that it is, incomplete and insignificant in the grand scheme of my present day. Which is where I prefer to live, relegating my past to the past, my grudges and demons and failures Most Embarrassing Moments and any other unresolved or unresolvable junk to less accessible and current places, and just plain get on with things. Take that, not-so-Fun-house mirror! I have better things to do with my days, and am already having too nice a life, whether it’s deserved or not, to be bothered hanging around in dusty corners staring at what I don’t much care to be anyhow. Toodle-oo! Find yourself somebody else to gnaw at, begone and good riddance! I’m headed back into the sunshine to play!

Liebster Blog Logo

Musica Mnemonica

Posted on by
32

photoI Keyboard Position

(For HH & JDH)

I went to hear a singer sing his due

Recital and to learn to love his voice,

Yet on the instant knew I had no choice

But watch th’ accompanist and think of you,

For when they came onstage a dream began

As German art-songs sung up from a deep

Chasm of voice that ought to haunt my sleep,

My heart was drawn instead to that tall man

Curled over the piano in that soft,

Sprung posture that in you I used to know,

When you assumed it, meant that you would go

Anon, and play your listeners aloft

To dazzling heights of ecstasy and free-

Fall back with us to depths of bronze despair

Because your fluid playing pulled us there,

And art, remembered now, that let me see

That this man taught those notes to you, each one,

And from his posture, know you were his son.photo collage

II Nocturne

(For JDH)

You always play the Evensong or toll

The close of Compline on that rank of keys

That lets the darkness in at night and sees

No morning come again where dawn should roll

Its banner out, because your day is past,

Untimely so, and others left behind

Whose love for you through music was refined,

And evening services to hold us fast

Within your arms; now elders play the songs

As you’d have done if time had let you play

A lifetime–even just another day–

With melody to right the thousand wrongs

That took you from our midst, that stopped the tune,

Left only other hands to tend the notes,

And threw you like a star among the motes

Before you could play in another June.

Now summers come no more, nor daylight’s dawn,

Though through the night your music lingers on.photo

Writing-itis

Posted on by
27

photo

Scriptorium

 

Worlds of iridescent gleam

all spring up glinting at the call

insouciant pens make, or they seem

to do: transform a drafty hall

into an arras-covered way

transecting palace corridors–

or granite boulders, flecked with grey,

to gravestones marking mythic wars’

highest heroics, men of myth;

or remnants of some long-forgot

mysterious monster’s kin and kith,

frozen in time upon the spot;

One peep at some dark road reveals

where mullioned windows lend a flash-

quick view of Heaven; one more steals

a different twitch of the eyelash–

a glimpse of Hell–its portals there

right in the same dark road just viewed

as commonplace by those who wear

mere men’s eyes to the interlude.

The glasses worn, instead, by scribes

can coalesce the simplest things

into the marvels of their tribes,

into the wealth of queens and kings,

into kaleidoscopic joys,

playgrounds of sound and touch and hope,

can turn mere scribblings and noise

into a length of golden rope

binding together known, unknown

and things not yet imagined still,

telling those tales their pens have grown

out of pure nothingness and nil

to shape breathtaking, worthy lands

and characters of dash, to cleanse

the mundane world with authors’ hands,

the swordlike flourish of those pens.

photo

Pardon my purple prose . . .

Creature Feature

Posted on by
30
photo

Little ray of sunshine, how sweet your flitting ways!

Orange Butterfly

Isn’t it charming, cute and quaint

That a butterfly made up in bright orange paint

Can masquerade thus as a garden saint

And be seen as a ray of the dancing sun

And a light, fleeting dash of enticing fun,

When its finely-veined system in truth is run

On a fuel of venom cold with spite—

It would far rather sink a great poisonous bite

In your pulsing carotid some murderous night—

How pretty, how dainty, how full of cheer

The butterfly’s presence makes it here,

At least behind all that orange veneer

photo

The Lady was a Tiger!

Delicious Deviation

A scurrilous, scandalous sinner

Invited him one night for dinner;

He learned that her wish

Was, he’d be the main dish,

Though before he knew that,

He was in her.

photo

They were drawn to his charisma like, well, moths to a flame . . .

The Ballad of Professor Montague

Professor Montague, a moth (specifically, Cecropia),

was glamorously smooth and frothy, ruling that Utopia,

his professorship at Flares, where tender butterflies and moths,

with innocent and awestruck stares, had visions wild as Visigoths,

fixed on him, rapt, their compound eyes, absorbing, drinking deeply

(through curled probosces and their brains) this wisdom daily, weekly–

they soaked it up–he’d flit about, and with his brilliance all were thrilled,

until one day he was attracted to the classroom lamp . . . and killed.

Show Me the Pony!

Posted on by
30

There is a lady who is the Ring-mistress, though she claims to be a “domesticated clown”, in her family’s circus of life, the lovely Belle of the Carnival. While busy juggling the necessities of family life artfully, she is also a graceful philosopher-provocateuse, posing and dilating upon and otherwise exploring questions of interest ranging from the when-why-how of developing creativity to her 4 January post asking whether ‘grass is greener syndrome’ is not still a very common problem among us. I, for one, can raise a hand affirming my vulnerability to that ailment.

It’s not exactly news that I’m always peering over fences and into shop windows with an acquisitive eye. My magpie lust for all things shiny, fabulous, mysterious, arcane or otherwise alluring is hardly a surprise to anyone, and I am certainly not above wishing myself as brainy, as desirable, as clever, as witty or as talented as another person. If not more so, she said sheepishly, for who doesn’t like the idea of being the best at something once in a blue moon? I thrive on the drive for what’s rich and beautiful and compelling.

colored pencil on paper

Mr. Congeniality

That’s when I look in the mirror and see someone who looks like Rasputin, and I mean the after-assassination version, when he’s been poisoned and shot and stabbed and clubbed and drowned and dismembered (!) and whatever else the Keystone Killers ultimately tried to bump him off. (This, because no matter how charismatic he was to some–and he really must’ve been charismatic to have the influence and power he gained, because let’s face it, he wasn’t exactly a Hollywood hottie and I’ve read that his personal hygiene, if any, was apparently ineffectual–there were those, including his assassins obviously, who found him wonderfully repellent.) So there I am, mirror gazing and seeing this unpleasant creature gawping back at me, and I think, Self, you need to switch out those nasty green glasses of envy for something a whole lot more rosy-toned. To which my inner self responds that clearly I am smarter than I look at the moment.

And I know it’s time to haul my inner Pollyanna back out of the cupboard. I need to be so optimistic as to not only see myself as perhaps worthy of a little envy myself but also to be surrounded by stupendous and spectacularly fine people, things and circumstances. Then I remember that I really am ‘all that’. Where others may be looking at life as a massive mound of manure and seeing only the steaming heap, I’m the village Natural who says, Well, if there’s all of this fine compost, why there must be a pony in here somewhere!

colored pencil on paper

Quit horsing around and show me the pony!

So I start digging. And I think, yes, I have got it great and I’m not such a slouch myself. Heck, I would trade lives with me if I were someone else! There might be enough little occurrences of peeling paint or math-phobia or hangnails or totaled cars or intestinal indisposition here and there in my oeuvre to keep me from appearing in any way fiction-perfect, but the sum total of my existence is, was and ever shall be (hope, hope) mighty nice indeed. Here I am, rolling on into my second half century with twenty-eight undaunted original teeth, working body parts basically functioning tolerably well, a decent education under my belt (any indecencies having been added by the recipient), living a comfortable and entertaining life with the Love of it (my life), and having a remarkable quantity of chances to meet fascinating and admirable people, to go astounding places, eat as much hypnotically delectable food as I dare (plus a little extra), wear whatever I jolly well want to wear, and not talk on the phone for whole days if I don’t feel like it.

In fact, my life is so good that I can admit to you that yesterday’s post about fantasizing favorite things in life is essentially all stuff I’ve already had the privilege of experiencing, some of it many times in different ways and combinations. Clearly, I don’t even have to be a terribly imaginative person to invent a fantastic life when I’m simply privileged enough to live it, do I. When you’ve seen a field of blue poppies pierced with late afternoon brilliance, you’ve stood in the hollows of the worn stone steps of Canterbury Cathedral watching history sift down in the dusty lamplight, you’ve eaten the exquisitely dainty Toast Skagen in Vaxholm where the shrimp apparently leapt from the sea directly onto your piece of buttery bread, you’ve crossed the Charles bridge over the Vltava in an evening mist so pearly that the statues seem to hover between inanimation and life–you have no need to go far to summon magical thoughts of all sorts into being. When you’ve carried a squalling baby over your arm singing an old nursery song until the colicky tension finally leaves her body in a sigh and she droops asleep, you’ve built forts in the shadowy midst of the tall Douglas-firs just to picnic there, you’ve ridden a train along the flanks of the Italian Alps and you’ve wandered Viejo San Juan to stand on the sandstone overlook and blink in amazement at the surreal turquoise of the crystalline seas, and you’ve had a sweet young calf nuzzle up against you in a grassy spring pasture, well, miracles must seem almost an everyday phenomenon.

It would be crass, given all of that, to sulk over things not had, places not gone. I’ve admitted to the infrequent twinge, more of a tiny zip of static really, but let’s face it, if I were to mope around coveting and envying I would be as big a heap of steaming whatsis as the aforementioned one that might or might not have contained the proverbial pony. So I will simply say that I am never permanently surfeited, what with being a mere mortal and all, and only consider each fresh miracle dropped into my undeserving but avid gift-receptacle lap as so much additional icing on the cake, another sparkler to add to my coronet of childish cheer and delight.

On which note, I must tell you that yet another unreasonably generous person has granted me the Versatile Blogger Award today. Pamela Zimmer, having been a most deserving recipient herself as the writer of the engaging and inspirational blog Stories of a Mom–ostensibly about being a mother (having devoted herself to this admirable and challenging art in trade for her previous profession as an architect)–sets a high standard for versatility herself. Somehow it seems appropriate that her name means “room” since her blog provides a welcoming place for finding like-minded and thoughtful and spirited companionship and insight, one of those homes-in-the-ether that are such a grand find through blog reading and writing. Many thanks to Pamela for this great kindness, and for reminding me indeed of this other boon I’ve been granted in the last year: finding a whole new world to explore and in which to meet, learn, rejoice, ponder, commiserate and laugh. These are among the riches that anyone viewing my life should well find enviable–though I’d love nothing more than that no one had need to envy me but would rather be equally rich and content.VBA logoI wouldn’t mind having a pony, mind you; however, our back patio mightn’t be the ideal digs for one, especially if that bobcat still lives in the greenbelt backing our property, so I’ll gladly accept in its stead the VBA, which I believe requires less hay and currying and de-worming medication. And I say, Thanks again for Everything!

Dream a Little Dream . . . But How to Choose?

Posted on by
45

photo-collage + textI never tire of fantasizing and imagining my ideal. But some days it’s really hard to decide what would be better. To be slung sidelong over a rocking chair in the wash of yellow afternoon, watching the lift and ruffle of wisteria where it is teased by currents chasing around me on the old screen porch, drinking Blackberry Acid and reading Evelyn Waugh while the sound of Gershwin laughs its way out the door to shake the sleepy cat into a semblance of watchfulness? Or perhaps I should the rather be curled in a high-backed leather wing chair with Zola, maybe Garcia Marquez, a faint dark stain of Verdi’s Requiem insinuating its way slowly through my brain, the lamp turned barely high enough to read so that it doesn’t fade the firelight or those lights fourteen stories down where the city shimmers below, and with the scent of Boeuf Bourguignon drifting into the paneled room from where it’s simmering down the hall?photo-collage

Yes, I say, sometimes it’s hard, so hard to choose which I should prefer. Would it be finer to be wandering up a quiet path in checkered green light, perfumed with the heady incense of cedar and douglas fir, emerging from their shadows into meadows lapping with avalanche lilies and paintbrush and gentians at my feet as I climb up higher, drowsy with the sun and hypnotized by the river crashing away, just out of sight, to my right, and stopping at last to rest on the stony shore of a glassy lake and slake my thirst, assuage my hunger, with a crisp sweet apple and some salty well-aged cheese? Or should I better like to stride out through wildly waving waist-high grass onto the dunes just as the lowering sky with its mass of high black clouds starts spitting a sand-fine mist of icy rain, but bundled so warmly to the eyes that only my cheekbones feel the chill, and watching the storm blow up a wave so high it seems to engulf the top of the sky before it shatters to smithereens on the bouldered bulkhead there–and just as that cloudbank starts to split to disgorge its mighty gout of rain, tearing up the beach to the safety of the white-painted cottage, where I peel off the layers of storm-proofing down to my jeans, drag the little table to the window to watch the show, cracking the Dungeness crab that I bought at the shop today, to drown it in butter while watching the shoreline also drown, and eat crab sweetness messily to the tune of pelting rain and smashing sea?photo

I suppose if all else fails I could simply ask my butler to make the selection, you see. No, this one I know: I’d rather ask my love, since whichever it is, it’ll be that much better a dream if he will only share it with me.

Foodie Tuesday: The Element of Surprise

Posted on by
33

One of the particularly attractive things about learning of a new cuisine or recipe is the way that it can introduce unexpected ingredients to mind and palate. Things that seemed commonplace or familiar are suddenly tinged with mystery, filled with puzzles and questions never before imagined. So much recombinant mischief can be made when a new ingredient–or a new use for one I thought I’d known–comes into play.

photo

Tomatillos

I’ve long known the delights of tomatillos. Salsa verde is a pleasurable variant of that endlessly flexible family of Mexican sauces best known in their tomato form, hot or cold. Usually made with chopped or pureed tomatillos in combination with onion, jalapeños, chiles, cilantro and whatever additional spices or lime juice the maker uses for her trademark blend, salsa verde brings a slightly lemony brightness of flavor and a zing of lively green to the plating of whatever magnificent assemblage of Mexican cuisine is in hand. As I love putting fruits of various kinds into my salsa cruda (or pico de gallo, the rough-cut raw and chunky form of salsa) for the bright, colorful, juicy and distinctive twists they can introduce to the party. Fruits are such glorious foils for spicy and savory foods that their addition has been popular for far too long for even a venerable geezer like me to credibly claim credit for pretty much any such combination. This is certainly a great reason to love tomatillos in spicy salsas.

The big surprise, for me (again, blame it on my innocence; blame it on my lack of smarts; blame it on the bossa nova) is that it turns out green is not the only color in which tomatillos ripen. So I bought these seeds for purple tomatillos, too, in high hopes of having an eventual opportunity for making some groovy purple salsa cruda. So cool! Unfortunately, the weather fairies of Texas had a little different slant, this summer, on the whole project and the poor little tomatillo plants, purple and green, couldn’t quite make it to full ripeness while being simultaneously strangled by drought. Pity. But one day I will make it happen. Then you can look for me to side my grilled salmon with a nice salsa cruda compounded of purple tomatillo, fresh peach, jalapeño, cilantro, lime juice and jots of salt, pepper, cumin, cinnamon. Fingers crossed!

photo

How nutty is it that I didn't know people could make and use acorn flour!

There are so many other magical goodies around in the meantime, things not so seasonally sensitive perhaps, that there’s no worry about going hungry while waiting. Flours, for one. Asian, Native American and other foodies have already known for eons that acorns can be a source of jellies, cooking and baking, not to mention much-needed nutrition in times of scarcity. Me, I had no idea that acorn flour is useful for so much in the non-squirrel kitchen. But now I’ve acquired a small stash of the stuff so I can remedy my ignorance soon. Yes, acquired–bought–I have no intention of being so marvelously industrious as is required for the long and involved process of soaking out the tannins and preparing the acorns for consumption when I don’t even know how successfully I’ll use the flour, let alone how compellingly palatable the results will be. Time and experimentation will tell. Promise I’ll keep you posted!

On the heels of that particular discovery, of course, I went off on an alternative-flour tangent and hunted for others of interest. I’ve done a bit of baking with almond flour before (almonds ground up, but not so far as to be turning into almond butter, a whole other sort of ingredient altogether and tasty and useful in its own right) and coconut flour as well, and both are godsend finds for one who’s wanting to reduce or eliminate grain-based flours for any reason in cooking and baking. I certainly like that they’re both mild enough in flavor to work for innumerable purposes and are able to be adapted to a large number of functions in different recipes. The next surprise flour that popped up on my radar was mesquite. Say, what??? Making flour from the leguminous seeds of the nearly unkillable weed tree that drives ranchers ’round the bend with its tire-puncturing spines and water-hogging monster tap-root? Well, proponents say mesquite meal has a nutty, “sweet, earthy taste with notes of cinnamon, molasses, and caramel”—hard to argue with the allure of that. Needless to say, I look forward to seeing what can come of such a distinctive sounding ingredient.

photo

A rose is a rose is a remarkable herb . . .

Consider the rose: what has long been one of the most favored flowers, universally admired for its varied beauty, perfume, and rather astonishing adaptability to climate and environs is being celebrated as the herb of the year this very year. Rose water, candied rose petals, rose hip tea, rose petal preserves, classic Turkish Delight–the list of rose-based foods has been building over centuries and only adds to the popularity of this queen of flowers. But most of that sort of thing was far outside the ken of a girl growing up in modest middle-class America, and didn’t really attract my attention until I was well into adulthood. Even then, I learned that as delicious as the rose is, a little can go a long way. So as I was contemplating my angle for this post and thinking about how fascinating it could be to yet discover previously unimagined ways to invite the rose to the dining table and began to contemplate what numinous form that idea might take. What did I do? Like any culinary detective-wannabe of the modern age, I Googled, of course. I typed in “rose as herb” and there before my very eyes appeared a handy page trumpeting the rose as Herb of the Year 2012. You call it lazy detective work, I call it kismet. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to. –Say, wouldn’t sweet potatoes be interesting prepared with a faint infusion of rosewater, some white pepper and a bit of fresh goat cheese whipped in? Or is that all old hat and I’m just showing off my ignorant bumpkin-osity once again? Never mind, I’m going to get me some of that Herb of the Year and have some fun. Ladies and gentlemen, spoons up . . .

Pretty Bird!

Posted on by
21

It was a simple little painting, nice if nothing especially original or fantastically crafted or anything startling like that, but I liked what I saw. It was of a slightly stylized, funny little semi-abstract bird, one of those paintings that always run the risk of being too cute and cuddly and charming for its own good, with a few little bitty splashes of the leftover paint sprinkled about the canvas almost as an afterthought, maybe meant to evoke flowers or stars. Not much to move me or even catch my attention . . . except . . .

mixed media on campus

No, this is not the painting. Not even part of it. I couldn't photograph someone else's artwork (this is mine, as always) and stick it in my blog even if I wanted to do so, because that would be (a) copyright infringement and (b) as ill-mannered as flying over someone and . . . well, you'll see . . .

I liked what I saw because that last little splash, those sprinkly spots–why, they landed smack in the empty space right beneath the birdie’s tail. All of a sudden a foofy little bird that seemed to have been meant to act all pert and prim . . . had pooped. In an eyeblink it went straight from being a prissy little pretty-bird vacant of all meaning to become a faintly twerpish chirper, a vaguely immature and irresponsible and a much, oh ever so much, more real and kindred-spirit creature. “I strafe upon you all!” it cheeped, but all the while with the same blandly friendly expression, almost as if it were a passive-aggressive scalawag of a bird just barely behind that pastel-feathered façade.

So much more understandable and filled with story-time potential, this impertinent little fellow. It’s not that I want to be that bronze-cast personage of the park whereon the pigeons land to ‘take their ease’–life offers plenty of opportunities for humans to feel they’re treated like inanimate objects or public restrooms as it is–it’s just that part of me is pleased that a little cutesy-bird was allowed to go his own way just for the element of surprise, that some painter I might’ve dismissed as boringly sugared-up with too-sweet birds decided, literally, to ‘let this one go’.

Even better to my mind, I’m afraid, is if that same artist never even noticed the obvious implication of that splotch’s placement and so sent out, for show and sale, a scamp of a bird that flicked its tail with devious disdain and dropped its pretty pastel bombs upon the painter’s cozy dainty reputation right along with all the passing world. I couldn’t help myself: I liked what I saw.mixed media on canvasNo, obviously this is not the painting in question either. In the interest of full disclosure, however, I will tell you that my original mixed media painting shown digitally here was titled ‘Ruach‘, a nice juicy Hebrew name meant to evoke the eponymous Holy Spirit. Which, being represented in the narratives generally by a much nicer (if not necessarily politer) sort of bird, would presumably drop kindlier sorts of things upon one in passing. I would hope. And hey, that just makes the earthly, earthy mischievousness of the bird in the other painting that much more amusingly charming by contrast. If you share my childish kind of humor, anyway.