A reed with the reeds in the river.

quotes, , ,

In the middle of the night when I have lost my way back to the Land of Nod, I sometimes listen to a book that I wouldn’t mind falling asleep to; that usually indicates one I’ve already read. Recently I chose The Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton, which seems to work well enough. It’s been so long since I read it in print, I do hope I might go back and really pay attention again one day. The feeling of exhilaration that book gave me still lingers.

In the meantime, the nighttime stories remind me of my ample supply of quotations by the author that are always useful for the opposite purpose, to make me wake up and think. The one I chose for today is both by and about Chesterton, from a lecture by Dale Ahlquist, which I noted that I’d found on the Chesterton Society site, a lovely place to browse if you want to read more.

“Not only has no one expected him to write about religion in a secular newspaper, he writes about religion in a way no one expects. Not surprising then, that he says religion must be paradoxical. Chesterton was already becoming famous for his paradoxes, and many of his readers and admirers assumed that he was being merely paradoxical by defending religion in general and Christianity in particular. But the jovial Chesterton was quite serious even if he was quite funny.

‘All paradoxers,’ he writes, ‘if they be also honest men, are aiming joyfully at their own destruction. We have paradoxes, and it is our effort, day and night, to turn them into truisms.’ What he is striving to achieve is not the paradox, but the platitude. ‘Every man who is fighting for his own beliefs is fighting to take it away from himself.  He may be clever in dull places and important in mean places; but in the land that he desires he will be nothing—a reed with the reeds in the river.’ A truism is a popular truth, a paradox an unpopular one. But they are both true.”

Dale Ahlquist is President of the Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton and has written five books about Chesterton.

Stained glass sea vegetable.

food and cooking, , ,

This morning I further prepared and ate my several leaves of kelp gathered yesterday. I had left them in water in the fridge overnight. First I drained the water into the cooking pot, and then cut up the leaves into bite-sized pieces.

As I drew each long blade out of the tangle,
many configurations, colors and textures were revealed.

The “slimy” stuff that comes off or out of the seaweed is part of itself and its goodness. It gives the broth substance. I ate some of the fresh kelp to make sure it wasn’t already very salty; it wasn’t salty and the flavor was fairly bland, compared to other seaweed I have eaten. So I went ahead and cooked all the pieces in water with a little salt. I could have made a raw salad with some or all of it, but because I rarely eat cold salads in the winter, that didn’t occur to me until I was already in the process of cooking the vegetable.

I fried firm tofu with sesame oil and tamari,
and combined half of that with about half of the kelp
to make a yummy breakfast bowl.

Tomorrow I’ll eat the rest of the kelp in its broth, and call this a successful experiment. I’m planning to take a knife with me to the beach in the future, in addition to the plastic bag I had handy this time, so I’ll be equipped for whatever foraging opportunities.

Thank you, Bella!

 

Bullwhip kelp on the beach.

food and cooking, friends, nature,

Another beach day! I took my friend Bella this time, as a co-breather of that medicinal air, a person I knew would ooh and ahh and thank God along with me. The sky was clear blue, and there was barely a breeze. The dry sand under our feet was warm.

As soon as we arrived at the shore and Bella set her eyes on the bull kelp, she made plans to take some home to eat, because she was pretty sure it was edible. But we left it lying on the sand because it was too heavy to lug up and down the beach. After walking and picking up shells for a while, we sat on a log and ate lunch, including some gingerbread I’d baked, and apples wedges washed in lemon juice.

Then back to the kelp, where as neither of us had any other tool, Bella used a stick of driftwood to hack the bulb and leaves from the “rope” of the sea vegetable, and we put the parts we wanted in a plastic bag. We stopped by my house to wash the sand off outdoors, after checking online about the edibility of it. This Nereocystis is also known as bullwhip kelp, ribbon kelp, and bladder wrack.

I kept a few leaves here, but they are waiting in water until tomorrow, because I ran out of time tonight to experiment with making soup. What took priority was writing here about my latest beach adventure!

The forests are apparently enjoying it.

quotes, trees, water, , ,

“As for the fascination of rain for the water drinker, it is a fact the neglect of which I simply cannot comprehend. The enthusiastic water drinker must regard a rainstorm as a sort of universal banquet and debauch of his own favourite beverage.

“Think of the imaginative intoxication of the wine drinker if the crimson clouds sent down claret or the golden clouds hock. Paint upon primitive darkness some such scenes of apocalypse, towering and gorgeous skyscapes in which champagne falls like fire from heaven or the dark skies grow purple and tawny with the terrible colours of port.

“All this must the wild abstainer feel, as he rolls in the long soaking grass, kicks his ecstatic heels to heaven, and listens to the roaring rain. It is he, the water drinker, who ought to be the true bacchanal of the forests; for all the forests are drinking water. Moreover, the forests are apparently enjoying it: the trees rave and reel to and fro like drunken giants; they clash boughs as revellers clash cups; they roar undying thirst and howl the health of the world.”

-G.K. Chesterton, “The Romantic in the Rain,” from A Miscellany of Men