Category Archives: books

Low-Lying Days

books, food and cooking, garden, poetry,

The last few days have found one or both of us down with the flu. I resisted until yesterday, after I returned from an early-morning gardening session at church, where I had accidentally broken off a rosebud. This morning it greeted me thus. I’m very thankful for it, a little present to cheer me up as I am missing a wedding and the chance to visit with friends and family from out of town.

Last evening was my worst sickly period, and the thought of cooking dinner made me cry. So I sat on the patio and read The Folding Cliffs. What strange interaction followed, and gave me creative energy to go into the kitchen and make dinner, I can’t really understand, and I won’t try to go into it here–but I managed to make another meal with what was on hand, and this time it was burritos with scrambled egg filling, spiced with chili and cumin, onions and garlic and sweet red pepper and cilantro. Cheese, too. And love and thankfulness and peace. That was the miracle that came from On High, via a fellow human using the written word with care.

And some fresh roundish fruits we called tomatoes, one each left in produce bags from two shopping expeditions. I had bought one, Mr. Glad the other. One from Mexico–not surprising–and the other from….Canada! What? The information on the sticker was so alarming to me, my mind ran away and I forgot to take a picture for proof that the world had turned upside-down, not least geographically.

I didn’t add chile-type “heat” to the filling I made, so we added it at the table in the form of sauce from a bottle. And this is the perfect time to display photos I took some time ago and have been waiting for a chance to use.

Whether or not something requiring spicing-up is going to be on the table that night, when my husband and I are in a certain local market, we like to peruse this library of hot sauces, right next to bags of hot chiles, in case you want to make your own, perhaps.

But we rarely have any of these playfully fiery brews around to use on our own Tex-Mex food, as we long ago developed a taste for Crystal Louisiana Hot Sauce, when as head cook I didn’t always distinguish one culinary region from another. And Crystal is cheap.

At the end of our meal, there were a few chunks of the reddish fruit left in their blue bowl. My man asked what to do with them, and I said, “Throw them out. I don’t ever want to buy a tomato out of season again.” You see, I had also been reading about M.F.K. Fisher and realizing that these sorry, pale things with nary a drop of flavor or juice do not express me. Ha ha.

I’d like to return my kitchen to the days memorialized in this photo, when we had our fill of dead ripe tomatoes in the summer and fall, and the rest of the year made do with canned or dried or frozen.

In the coming months I’ll write more about tomatoes– growing, picking, buying, cooking. As to eating them fresh, I think it’s best, for now, merely to anticipate.

A Few June Days

books, bread, church, ,

It’s been a busy week so far, too busy to philosophize about and too busy for much picture-taking. A couple of the days were primarily taken up with not being busy, actually.

This June has been cool, so far. But it was warm enough to go to the beach with a friend for her birthday on Monday. First we went down this steep switchbacked trail…

 

 

…then settled against a log and drank some hot cocoa, ate our snacks, and shed layers of clothing as the sun got higher and broke through the mist. Lack of wind makes for a relaxing time on the sand.

 

 

A Japanese family was so photogenic, I tried to sneak photos of the children. This is the best I could do.

 

 

 

When I got home from the beach,

Mr. Glad was reading on the patio and being struck by the miniature roses in a pot nearby. He grabbed the camera and took this photo, which I am humbly posting black spot and all.

The next day was my turn to help make Communion bread at church. In the Orthodox Church it is called prosphora, which means offering, from the ancient tradition of the people bringing bread to offer for the service.

I’d like to write and show more photos sometime about the different breads we make, but for now I’ll just show you this one I accomplished, called a Lamb.

When the bread was done, just outside there were garden plots to be weeded and watered, and flowers to be deadheaded. Always something new is blooming or changed from my last visit, and I have to take a picture or two.

This morning I made it over to visit a bookworm friend who’s always giving or lending me books. This stack shows:

1) on top, the video we watched together, of poet Richard Wilbur reading some poems and being interviewed at University of Southern California in 1990,

2) Proust was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer; D. said that when she read it she thought of me.

3) Three books by or about M.F.K. Fisher, which D. is lending me. Friend K. has been wanting me to read Fisher for some time, but I never dreamed the books could be small paperbacks I might read in bed!

4) A Gentle Madness, a book about book lovers and collectors, which I ordered online, not dreaming how big it is, and

5) The Outline of Sanity, a Life of G.K. Chesterton, also bought online recently.

I know it looks a bit ambitious, considering the other stacks of books around here. But I’m hopeful of having more reading time soon, while recuperating from foot surgery and in the car on several trips we have planned.

But I’m ending with one more picture from church, of hollyhocks and a gladiolas, because I couldn’t get the photo to go into the right spot above!

Oh! Addendum: Just before the close of this third blessed day of this week, Dear Daughter sent me this howling link for any of you/us who don’t just love to shop.

Joy in the Holy Spirit — Pentecost

books, church, Pascha, ,

Today the church is decorated with green–ferns, birch branches, palm fronds, hanging from the chandelier and draped over everything. Lilies frame the icon that portrays the pouring out of the Holy Spirit 50 days after the Resurrection. The vestments and other cloths are green now as well. This passage from Alexander Schmemann’s For the Life of the World explains why we Orthodox take so much trouble for the sake of the appearance of our temple:

The liturgy [Communion service] is, before everything else, the joyous gathering of those who are to meet the risen Lord and to enter with Him into the bridal chamber. And it is this joy of expectation and expectation of joy that are expressed in singing and ritual, in vestments and in censing, in that whole “beauty” of the liturgy which has so often been denounced as unnecessary and even sinful.

Unnecessary it is indeed, for we are beyond the categories of the “necessary.” Beauty is never “necessary,” “functional” or “useful.” And when, expecting someone whom we love, we put a beautiful tablecloth on the table and decorate it with candles and flowers, we do all this not out of necessity, but out of love. And the Church is love, expectation and joy. It is Heaven on earth, according to our Orthodox tradition; it is the joy of recovered childhood, that free, unconditioned, and disinterested joy which alone is capable of transforming the world. In our adult, serious piety we ask for definitions and justifications, and they are rooted in fear–fear of corruption, deviation, “pagan influences,” whatnot. But “he that feareth is not made perfect in love “(I John 4:18). As long as Christians will love the Kingdom of God, and not only discuss it, they will “represent” it and signify it, in art and beauty. And the celebrant of the sacrament of joy will appear in a beautiful [robe], because he
is vested in the glory of the Kingdom….

Today is Pentecost, or Holy Trinity Sunday, so named because all the Persons of the Trinity are remembered–Christ sent the Holy Spirit from the Father. This event is, as our rector reminded us, the seal and crown and joy of Pascha, and our salvation. It is a feast second only to Pascha, to the Resurrection itself, and there is so much to celebrate that we have another Divine Liturgy tomorrow, on Holy Spirit Day.

During the time between Pascha and Pentecost, we withheld the prayer about the Holy Comforter from our daily selections, as we entered into a period of “waiting” for the Spirit to be given. Now its restoration imparts the reality of Pentecost as a historic event which has been given to us in Christ, and we pray:

O Heavenly King,
The Comforter, The Spirit of Truth,
Who art everywhere present and filleth all things,
Treasury of Blessing, and Giver of Life,
Come and abide in us,
And cleanse us from every impurity,
And save our souls, O Good One.

Curious about asparagus.

books, food and cooking, ,

The Curious Cook, Harold McGee, has now studied whether asparagus-snapping is the best way to avoid this vegetable’s tough parts, and you can read his conclusions here . We were just having a discussion about this issue in our kitchen last week. My own style of trimming is sort of a variation on Harold’s. But I’ll tell you about that, maybe, next spring when I have more and fresher of the stalks to photograph. In the meantime, there is much fascinating and useful information to be had from the short article.

I haven’t made very much use of the two books by McGee that I invested in many years ago. But I am grateful to him for applying scientific research to our common kitchen tasks. I did learn–and remember– that if you happen to have a copper bowl around, you will get more volume to your egg whites if you beat them in it, because of a chemical reaction that happens. And it’s o.k. to wash mushrooms, because even sitting in a bowl of water, they hardly absorb any (he weighed them before and after) and don’t get soggy.

Recently I subscribed to his blog, but it isn’t very busy. And just taking his books off the shelf and leafing through them makes me think that if I put in a little time with them, I might be able to learn more for use in my current culinary phase.