Studies in the drop of blood.

nature, wildflowers,

IMG_6969 QAL bridge 6-5-18

Not all Queen Anne’s Lace flowers have the bit of red in the middle. The story is told about how one of the queens Anne — no agreement on which — pricked her finger while sewing, and a drop of blood fell on her tatting. That’s where the red spot comes from! One of my readers told me this story, I thought Linda, but I can’t find the comment…

One day this spring I saw so many variations on this phenomenon, I made a collection. Today I photographed bees and a wasp on the same flowers, but I want to post these earlier pictures instead of bees for a change. They are in the order I snapped them.

No blood was spilled in the process of assembling this album.

A theme of love and serving.

church, food and cooking, poetry, quotes, , , ,

This sign on the wall in our church kitchen shows evidence of its location above the coffee maker. I was looking at it as though for the first time this morning as I prepared the agape meal at church. It was my fourth time cooking for 100-120 people; I don’t know exactly how many ate today, but the important thing is we didn’t run out of food. 🙂

I went back and forth from the kitchen to the church as needed to put things in the oven to warm, and to worship. Before Divine Liturgy there was a glorious baptism, and I was surprised to miss the actual immersion of the baby, but I came in to the heady scent of Holy Chrism as he was being lifted out of the font, which in an Orthodox baptism is no more than halfway through, so there was plenty of praying left to do, and rejoicing in the love and joy that filled the place.

The next time I had to leave and come back, I entered when Father Peter was giving the homily. I’d never heard him preach before, and his words were full of warm encouragement. Near the end he recited the whole poem below, with a fitting and enlivening amount of expression.

It was a great honor to be the one serving and feeding my fellow worshipers a few minutes later. All week I’ve been grousing and anxious about the upcoming event, even though I had planned and organized well and had young and competent helpers, an easy menu, etc. As has been the case before, I began to relax on Saturday when we did the first steps of cooking. I was so grateful for my assistants who are my friends and love me.

Today, even more people helped, were thankful, told me that they loved the food — all the hugs and kind words I could want, to make me feel what a gift it is to be part of this parish and of Christ’s Church, and to work with people on a worthy project.

When I heard Herbert’s poem, I immediately thought, “I must share that on my blog!” I forgot to take any pictures of the food to share, but I think you can envision a hefty chunk of cheesy polenta with a scoop of the meatiest possible red sauce ladled over, plus a dollop of pesto on top. Mixed greens on the side, and ice cream for dessert. I might do this same menu again sometime, it was so relatively easy and successful.

For the good of our souls, it was not worth much, though, compared to the Love that Father Peter talked about, and George Herbert sang of, and which we had tasted in the Holy Mysteries that morning.

But it was an echo and a reminder, and gave us sustenance so that we could sit around basking in our family happiness for a while. “O taste and see that the LORD is good!”

LOVE

Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back
                              Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
                             From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
                             If I lacked any thing.
A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
                             Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
                             I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
                             Who made the eyes but I?
Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
                             Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
                             My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:

                             So I did sit and eat.

–George Herbert

Pippin’s Dutch Baby

family, food and cooking,

When I first became acquainted with this dish it was a version called Hootenanny. A simple snack or breakfast or anytime food that my children could make themselves with few ingredients, and I always would be pleased with their independence and nourishment.

After Pathfinder married and we were treated by my new daughter-in-law to a more upscale version named Dutch Baby, I didn’t really want to go back to the humble Hootenanny. I haven’t eaten Iris’s Dutch Baby lately, and perhaps it’s identical to this one. When Pippin was here I decided to make this “popover pancake” for her and the children Sunday evening, and I was surprised that I could locate her own version of the recipe in my messy files.

I doubled the recipe and baked it in a 12-inch cast iron skillet. Also I put the lemon zest in the batter and served the wedges with maple syrup. As long as you keep eggs and milk at a suitable ratio, the recipe is wonderfully adaptable as to ingredients and baking pans. It’s fun if you can bring it to the table when still puffed up from the oven, but it deflates quickly!

Pippin’s Dutch Baby

1/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoon grated lemon zest

3 large eggs at room temperature 30 minutes
2/3 cup whole milk at room temperature
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
2 T. sugar
1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1/2 stick salted butter, cut into pieces

Put 10-in cast-iron skillet on middle rack of oven and preheat oven to 450°F. Stir together sugar and zest in a small bowl.

Beat eggs with an electric mixer at high speed until pale and frothy, then beat in milk, flour, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt and continue to beat until smooth, about 1 minute more. (I just mixed everything at once in the blender.) Add butter to hot skillet and melt, swirling to coat. Add batter and immediately return skillet to oven. Bake until puffed and golden-brown, 18 to 20 minutes.

Serve immediately, topped with lemon sugar. Lemon wedges on side.

Walking in the wetlands.

birds, family, nature, wildflowers, , , , , ,

Here in the Land of Perpetual Drought, we still have wetlands! On Sunday Pippin and I found ourselves with a few hours for just the two of us, and we walked in a wetlands wildlife preserve. We saw snowy egrets, ducks, red-winged blackbirds and a few other birds we didn’t know the names of, as we walked a 2-mile loop in the afternoon.

I noticed that the docent-led tours of the site only go through June; is it because the birds aren’t as plentiful after that? Or is it the schoolchildren who are scarce then? In any case, the plants were easier for us to get close to than the birds, although they were also flying around in the wind, so I don’t have many good pictures, but I wanted to share a bit of what I did come home with.

These tall and long-stemmed plants were covered with little overlapping seed pods, in varying stages of maturity and color, from purple like this one to tan and near white. One of them was covered with black and green bugs who seemed to be close relations.

I got one focused profile picture of a green one, and my entomological identification skills are practically non-existent, so I am putting a blurry picture here, too, in case someone who knows things happens by and wants to instruct me.

It’s always a bit sad when one meets a fellow-creature and can’t greet them by name, or learn the name in anticipation of a next meeting. [Tipped off by a commenter below, I will call this fellow “Green Stink Bug” if I meet him again.] But I must prioritize, and probably should care more about that sadness as it pertains to the humans I meet…. Let’s see, what was the name of that woman I met at church Sunday?

The flowers above I had been walking briskly by, thinking unconsciously of Queen Anne’s Lace, and then suddenly I thought, No, they are most likely Parsley Family members, but the flower head is not the same, and they are so short… When I came home I looked up various hemlocks, etc, and didn’t come to any conclusions. 😦

In the process, though, I read on Wikipedia: “Apiaceae or Umbelliferae, is a family of mostly aromatic flowering plants named after the type genus Apium and commonly known as the celery, carrot or parsley family, or simply as umbellifers.” The word umbellifer made me laugh out loud; somehow it sounds like a group who would resist domination by naming and categorizing, and from now on I will just be happy if I can be on terms with them all friendly enough to say, “Hello, Umbellifer!”

Another mystery plant is this one:

…which did not always grow in a mound shape. It has long draping stems with bead-like buds:

At least, they appear to be about to open into flowers. I have to be content to remain ignorant and unknowing about more and more things, it seems, the longer I live.

Pippin is the perfect companion on a walk like this. She doesn’t mind my dullness or my stopping and staring; actually she encourages the latter, as she is always drawing my attention to something I was oblivious to. She had never been to this place before, and it had been years since I went with my husband. We were so glad to be together on a gorgeous and mild summer day in a natural oasis of sorts hidden away from most people — but the birds know!